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BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


































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I think clothes are immoral and disgusting,” said Charley quietly. 















BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


BY 

FULTON OURSLER 

\ » 


ILLUSTRATED BY 

FRANK TENNEY JOHNSON 

AND 

DELOS PALMER, Jr. 


“And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he 
told it to his brethren: and they hated him 
yet the more. 

“And they saw him afar off and before he 
came near unto them, and they conspired 
against him to slay him. 

“And they said one to another, Behold this 
dreamer cometh! 

“Come now therefore, and let us slay him, 
and cast him into one of the pits, and we 
will say, An evil beast hath devoured him: 
and we shall see what will become of his 
dreams /" 



NEW YORK 

THE MACAULAY COMPANY 


Copyright, 1924, 

By THE MACAULAY COMPANY 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA 

MAR 21 *24 


TO MY THREE 















- 



CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I A Good, Hard-Working Woman.11 

II The Man Upstairs . . •..20 

III Brushes and Shoes and Dreams ...... 32 

IV Getting to the Bottom of It.42 

V “I Wonder if There Is a Way Out”.49 

VI Dreams and Realities.54 

VII Another Woman Awake.65 

VIII Clara Has a Visitor . . . . t ...71 

IX “We Should Never Have Taken That Kiss” . . 78 

X Better to Die in the Wilderness than- ... 87 

XI Day In, Day Out. 93 

XII Exposed ..101 

XIII The Prospect of Adventure . . .[..... 115 

XIV His Dream Girl.124 

XV Clothes and Sex and God Almighty.133 

XVI Four Wise Mad Men.145 

XVII The Ideal Is in Thyself 161 

XVIII Scandal. . .... 170 

XIX The Great Conspiracy.. . 174 

XX A Flight in the Dark ..181 

XXI The Girl with the Rich Smile.180 

XXII The Rocky Island of Dreams.204 

XXIII Free!.209 






















CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

XXIV Nude!. 216 

XXV White Bodies and Black Souls. 223 

XXVI God Help Us, Hurry .230 

XXVII Venus Was Not Dead!.239 

XXVIII Behind the Red Cord. 243 

XXIX Charley Draws a Picture.. . 247 

XXX Woman. 264 

XXXI The Wonderful Thing 270 

XXXII A Precious Fool. 279 

XXXIII I Am That I Am . .294 

XXXIV Years! Years! Years!.. * . 298 

XXXV Cold!. 307 

XXXVI Mr. Stricker’s Best Original » m ,, • . . 314 














Ballade of the Golden Aphrodite 

When I no more upon the passing street 
Shall mark fair faces as they blossom by, 

And my dulled heart no more the faster beat 
For invitation of a laughing eye, 

Heedless of lunar breast and queenly thigh. 

And witchcraft hair down-fallen—ah! then, mighty 
Implacable queen, ’tis best that I should die. 

When I forget thee, golden Aphrodite. 

When all the honey that was once so sweet 
Tempts me no more, and, unobservant, I 
Pass through the flowering throng on leaden feet, 

That once were winged as Mercury’s to fly. 

Questing like hawk down-swooping from the sky, 

A lord of loving unashamed—ah! mighty 
Implacable queen, ’tis best that I should die. 

When I forget thee, golden Aphrodite. 

Yea! bring the funeral coins, the winding sheet, 

And the plumed hearse, and mournful threnody 
Of dark drums rolling for my sore defeat, 

Let me no longer live when I deny 
Desire, and burn no more, nor glorify 
Love’s wildness and its wonder—then, ah! mighty 
Implacable queen, ’tis best that I should die. 

When I forget thee, golden Aphrodite. 

Envoi 

Implacable Queen, let me sepulchred lie, 

When woman shall not any more delight me. 

Nor even Helen’s self provoke a sigh. 

When I forget thee, golden Aphrodite. 

Richabd Le Galuenne. 


The above verses are inscribed with 
deep admiration to Fulton Oursler, 
with whose “Behold this Dreamer!” 
they are to have the honour ot asso¬ 
ciation. R. Le G. 


\. 















BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

CHAPTER ONE 

A GOOD, HARD-WORKING WOMAN 

Clara Turner was getting a sick headache. 

In a woman of Clara’s temperament, a sick headache may 
be the prelude to unimaginable disaster. The throbbing pain 
at her temples, the tired ache in her back and thighs, the 
goading necessity of household drudgery which cannot be left 
undone, the consuming poison of fatigue, may impel her 
finally to a step of decision. 

Both sides of the family were agreed that Clara was a good 
Christian woman. Even Charley’s mother admired her 
patience. When she was raising Charley, she often remarked, 
she never could stand him the way Clara stood him. The 
wonder was that Clara retained so much cheerfulness. She 
had not been raised to housework. Before marriage, her life 
had been quite different. 

But to-day Clara was getting a sick headache. It was 
Wednesday, which was ironing day. In the kitchen, .Clara had 
laid out her ironing board, wrapped around with discarded 
bed-sheets, between the table and the back of an unpainted 
old chair. Over the board she was bent, moving a black iron 
forward and backward, in a jerky rhythm of fomenting dis¬ 
content. She muttered to herself as she pressed the hot 
bottom of the iron against the starched fronts of Charley’s 
shirts. On the gas stove, two other irons were heating above 
the humming circles of blue and yellow flames. 

11 


12 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


The atmosphere was humid and warm. Clara’s waist had 
worked free from the confinement of her skirt, now to bulge 
blowzily and without dignity behind her. In unkempt spin¬ 
dles her hair protruded. Her cheeks were a dark, wet yellow, 
and globules of perspiration gleamed above her eyes and on 
the exposed skin of her chest. 

Her brows were drawn together in a hurt jumble; in her 
eyes lay a haunted and wounded glitter; a fire like the slowly 
flaming fuse of a cracker that will presently go off. 

With the black iron lifted in her hand, she paused in her 
labor. There was a moment of irresolution; then came a 
decision. 

She put the iron on the back of the stove, banging it down 
heavily against the grilled tracework, thick with grease. She 
sucked her teeth against her lips vindictively, as she turned 
out the gas under the heating irons. She muttered words that 
were like a malediction, as her nervous fingers thrust back 
the edges of her waist within her skirt. Carelessly, and with 
a thoughtless fury, she jabbed back the truant strands of her 
hair. 

Without a hat, she left the house. Hurrying down the 
white marble steps, she rushed around the block to a corner 
drug store, where there was a telephone booth. 

“Give me St. Paul 87542” she bade the operator. 

A woman’s voice, loftily cool and efficient, replied. 

“I want to speak to Mr. Strieker,” demanded Clara per¬ 
emptorily. 

“This is Mr. Strieker’s secretary. Who is it wants to speak 
with him, please?” 

“His daughter.” 

“Mrs. Turner or Miss Cissie?” 

“Mrs. Turner.” 

“Oh! Just a minute, Mrs. Turner, and I’ll see if he can 
be disturbed!” 


A GOOD, HARD-WORKING WOMAN 13 

A man’s round, bushy voice, rotund with importance, came 
a moment later and shouted: 

“Helloa, Clara! What’s the matter?” 

“Pop, can you come over to the house to-night?” 

“I don’t know. What for?” 

“I want to have a talk with you, pop. I’ve just got to have 
a talk with you!” 

“Why—what about?” 

“About Charley.” 

“Oh!” 

“There’s got to be something done with Charley. He can’t 
go on the way he is. I just can’t stand this kind of life any 
longer. I just can’t, pop!” 

“Well! Look here, Clara. You know I don’t believe in 
meddling. You went your own way when you married him. 
I told you then, you know-” 

“Don’t throw that up to me. Something’s got to be done.” 

“But what can I do? I’ve given him a job in this plant. k 
What else can I do?” 

“Come over to the house to-night, pop!” 

“Well, you know your Cousin Elsie is visiting us for a few 
days. I’ll have to bring your mom, and her, and Cissie with 
me. I’d have to do that.” 

“Well, we can send them out for a walk in Lafayette 
Square,” decided Clara, desperately firm. “I’ve just got to do 
something!” 

“All right, Clara. We’ll all get there about seven o’clock. 
How are you feeling?” 

“I’ve got a sick headache,” replied Clara dully, and hung 
up the receiver. 

Charley Turner, Clara’s husband, was a clerk in the ac¬ 
counting Department of the Atlass Brush Manufacturing 
Company, of which his father-in-law, John Strieker, was the 
owner. 


14 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


At the time that his wife and his father-in-law were con¬ 
versing over the telephone, Charley should have been making 
out bills. 

Instead, he was balancing a window-pole on the edge of 
his chin, juggling two oranges meanwhile with his hands. 

Clara and Charley Turner, with all their relatives, lived in 
a certain Eastern city that is shaped as an oyster. It is a 
city without fancy; an oyster without its pearl. “Wake up!” 
it cries to the populace. 

To keep awake is a passion of its people. Every man must 
be wide awake. Every shoulder must be lifted against the 
wheel, excepting only the overseers. Their duty it is to cry 
“Wake up,” and to keep on crying “Wake up,” and to urge 
on the shoulders that are lifted against the wheel. 

Flung from its crosses, steeples and towers are new ban¬ 
ners; the flaunting banderoles of aroused and awakened 
progress. Of old, the city had among its dwellers wise men 
who wished to dream. But all the wise men have been buried 
now, and all the dreamers have been awakened to the plans 
and program of the Indian Club. 

It is a city of organized alarm clocks. Everybody belongs 
to something, the purpose of which is to arouse somebody. 
It is not respectable not to belong to something. One must 
first be a member in good standing of a recognized church, 
and, after that, a Rotarian, if possible. If not possible, then 
there are neighborhood improvement associations, welfare 
organizations, ten thousand four hundred and two of them, 
all determined to see that the city is kept wide awake. 

Red-blooded, two-fisted, meat-eating, God-fearing he-men 
and she-women pay their taxes. Their fealty is to God, State, 
and Institution. After that, they are virulently patriotic 
toward their native city. They love it with a most surprising 
and practical intensity. Not for the things which the dead 


A GOOD, HARD-WORKING WOMAN 15 

wise men cherished it do they kindle, but for new things 
which they can see and understand. 

They are indifferent to the red cenotaph of its ancient shot 
tower, but they pay a strange reverence to a yellow and 
ghastly minaret, raised in the chief market place, because 
perched upon its peak is an immense blue and white patent 
medicine bottle, revolving day and night, its thousands of 
electric bulbs visible in the darkness, far out of the harbor, 
into the careless bay, even beyond the gray and green sentinel 
post of Fort Carroll. 

Its dreamers are buried obscurely. It is better to forget 
them, for some of them drank too much. In the blatant 
public square, at its proudest street crossings, however, they 
have fixed a proper monument. In marble and bronze it 
bleats the virtues of a fellow who was for a few years presi¬ 
dent of a jerk-water railroad upstate. 

The art gallery is open a few hours a day, a very few days 
a year. But its harbor is wide open every moment to the 
heavily laden ships from everywhere. 

It is an old place, this town, with traditions wrought in 
the exquisite textures of courage and faith. But now it has 
lost its ancient virtue; it has rouged its cheeks, hennaed its 
tresses, touched its lashes with mascara, and taken to flirting 
on street corners. 

In brief, it is an American Eastern city—old enough to 
know better, but young enough to pawn its mortal soul. 

The company gathered in the parlor of Charley and Clara 
Turner’s house, that sultry night in July, fanned themselves 
with dried palm leaves, given away as premiums in a popular 
tea and coffee shop. Thousands like them were at the same 
hour sitting in their own parlors, cooling themselves with 
identical fans, distributed by the same shop. The Turners 
and the Strickers were typical families. Nearly all of them 
had been born within the oysterish outline of the city, except 


16 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


old John Strieker himself, who had come into the world in 
Talbott County. 

Most of them had never crossed the boundaries of the city. 
It is not a traveler’s town. They prided themselves, all of 
them, on being like everyone else. “Typical” was a word of 
praise, used with unctuous pride at the annual banquets of 
the Old Town Merchants and Manufacturers Association. 

On this muggy night, typical families all over the city 
were engaged in typical relaxation. Thousands of relatives 
were visiting thousands of other relatives, sitting in the front 
parlors, just as the Turners and Strickers were sitting in the 
front parlor of Charley and Clara. Others were down on an 
excursion. Across the patient green waters of the Bay, the 
steamer Louise was grinding its way back to the Light Street 
Wharf. Straw hat factory girls and cotton duck mill hands 
were dancing and mooning upon its worn decks, not bothering 
to remember that their grandfathers and grandmothers had 
danced under the same moon, over the same waters, and on 
the same smelly old boat. 

In Druid Hill Park, the Town Band was playing the 
Beautiful Blue Danube , to a wide encircling audience on 
benches and the grass—an audience of Baltimore and Ohio 
Railroad clerks, Gardiner Dairy truck drivers, Johns Hop¬ 
kins Hospital nurses, and hungry college professors. At 
Bay Shore, Riverview, and other summer resorts, there was 
eating, dancing, flirting; angry old women, giggling young¬ 
sters, boisterous and pimply young men. 

The wheels were not revolving, for it was night. The sore 
shoulders were at rest. The people were trying to forget. 
The voices of the overseers were silenced until the morrow, 
when, like Muezzins from a tower in Asia, they would howl 
to the mob: 

“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up? 9 

All day long the bare flesh of blistered shoulders had been 


A GOOD, HARD-WORKING WOMAN 17 

lifted against the hard steel of the wheel’s rims. The factory 
looms had whizzed and groaned and roared. The hearts of 
the toilers had sickened with the monotony of the work and 
the continual call of the overseers. 

When the last whistle was blown, the toilers had poured 
out of the gates and hurried home. They lived among 
stretches, vast, interminable, monotonous, of tiny red and 
yellow brick houses. The bricks were all penciled out 
meticulously in white mortar, made utterly distinct, so that 
the front walls of the houses were like giant checker boards. 
Before each house was a set of white marble steps, quarried 
from Ellicott City. Each window had its lace curtains, its 
brazen urn from Eisenberg’s, and its jaded, wilted fern. 

It was a miracle how a man could tell his own house from 
the hundred thousand others just like it. 

Charley Turner rented just such a house, up in the north¬ 
western part of the city, once a respectable neighborhood, 
but now blackened and degraded by an invasion of negroes. 

In these later times it had become a nondescript neighbor¬ 
hood of intermingling negroes, poor whites, and proud old 
families too lazy to move out. It was not far from Penn¬ 
sylvania Avenue, the long, dark highway of “colored” shops 
and eating places, but it was also near to Lafayette Square 
and to Harlem Park, with its mild, sunken grasses, flower 
beds and limping little fountain. Among miles of molder- 
ing old houses lived Clara and Charley; mansions of a 
sturdier period, falling apart; among dark alleys, where 
savage black faces gleamed under the street lamps; a region 
of rolling whites of watchful eyes, the secret click of juggled 
dice, the angry flash of razor steel, and the shrill billingsgate 
of wenches quarreling over sticky brats. 

People wondered how long Charley and Clara were going 
to live up that way. They reckoned rent was just as cheap 
down in the Southwestern part of the city, or over by Clifton 


18 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


Park. They knew Charley didn’t make much. He had lost 
every job he ever got, until he married Clara Strieker. Then 
Clara’s father gave him a job with the Atlass Brush Com¬ 
pany. They all knew that old John Strieker kept Charley on 
only because it would be too expensive to fire him; the old 
man would have to support Clara and Charley both. 

Her disgust of the “nigger street” on which she lived was 
one of the irritations which helped Clara’s sick headache 
along. When the time arrived to expect the visit of her 
folks, she was still undecided just what, or how much, she 
would tell her father about Charley. What she really wanted 
was an outlet, and then consolation. 

She was that kind of woman. Consolation helped her, in¬ 
variably. She warmed and grew strong under pity. She 
pitied herself and liked others to pity her. In this she felt 
an exalted righteousness, for she knew perfectly well how 
deserving of pity she was, with a husband like Charley. 

Clara was short, with rather a dingy figure. Her face was 
not without intelligence, of a shrewd order, and before mar¬ 
riage she had been as pretty as the best of the young shoppers 
on Charles and Lexington Streets. Like most girls who ate 
the fresh vegetables from the Eastern Shore, and the fishes, 
crabs and oysters from the salt water of the Bay, she had a 
fresh, vital bloom. Her eyes were brightly green, and for¬ 
merly her cheeks were glowing with the cerise tints of good 
health; her lips, too; and her hair was incorrigibly wavy, in 
spite of the damp mists which rose from the grumbling 
waters of the Patapsco. 

Marriage and hard work had struck her with contemptuous 
hands. Every morning she cleaned house; its rooms were 
immaculate; she performed its sweepings and dustings and 
scrubbings with the passionate devotion of a temple virgin. 
To be a good housewife was one of the typical virtues of the 
town. Especially did she keep the front marble steps clean; 


A GOOD, HARD-WORKING WOMAN 19 

she scrubbed them as if the water in her galvanized iron 
bucket were lustral, and blessed with the benediction of a 
priest. With the bucket and a scrub brush, she appeared 
“out front” as soon as Charley was off to work, before the 
breakfast dishes were washed. She got down on her knees 
twice a day and scrubbed those steps, so that the white marble 
glistened like snow. It was necessary to clean them twice, 
because the hucksters, insurance collectors, mail man and 
others who called dirtied them with their careless feet. 

She did her own family wash. She cooked all her meals. 
Of her, it was said that she was typical; a good wife, hard¬ 
working, industrious, clean, loyal, Christian. 


CHAPTER TWO 


THE MAN UPSTAIRS 

They were all there—Clara’s mother, and Clara’s father, and 
Clara’s sister, and Clara’s brother, and Clara’s Cousin Elsie. 

Also, Charley’s mother was there; Charley’s mother, who 
was a widow, and lived on Pitcher Street; she had dropped 
in most inopportunely. 

Clara and Charley’s mother never got on. 

It was dark in the front parlor. On summer evenings it 
was the custom to sit in the dark and converse. The green 
posted oil lamp on the corner of the alley outside gave a 
feeble yellow glare through the open, unscreened window. 

Most families sat out on the white marble front steps, often 
dragging out rocking chairs from the parlor, and spreading 
themselves over the sidewalk. Many of the families on the 
block where Charley and Clara lived were doing so now, and 
there was considerable interchange of visits. Up and down 
the streets an irregular procession passed; women on their 
way to the movies, or enjoying the less costly relaxation of 
“taking a walk around the block.” Some of them carried 
pitchers and glass bowls in their hands; they were on their 
way to a bakery up the street a few “squares,” where ice 
cream was sold at thirty-five cents a quart. 

From the open window of a house across the street came 
the strains of a phonograph; a record of Homer Rodeheaver, 
singing “Brighten the Corner Where You Are.” In another 
house, a group of old men and women were gathered around 
an ancient Estey cottage organ, singing in cracked voices a 

20 


THE MAN UPSTAIRS 


21 


camp-meeting tune. Blacks were bawling curses in the dirty 
alley behind the houses, obscenely making threats. A police¬ 
man strode by, lifting his straw helmet to wipe away the 
perspiration from his forehead. 

“Ain’t this hot weather just awful?” 

“Yes, Clara, it is,” assented Elsie Strieker, Clara’s younger 
cousin. “I was just saying to Uncle John on the way over, 
how hot it was. It’s just awful. I sure will be glad when I 
get down to Cape May. I’m going down with some girl 
friends for a two weeks’ stay, the first of next month. Oh, 
boy!” 

Elsie was a typical salesgirl, who worked in Rickard’s, in 
the millinery department. She was dressed with rather a 
dash. 

“I believe Bob Morton is going to be down there at the 
same time,” she finished, with a self-conscious giggle. “He’s 
our floor manager, you know. Oh, boy!” 

“I bet you’re stuck on him!” said Cissie Strieker. She 
was Clara’s younger sister. She regarded herself as a typical 
flapper; she made no secret of the fact that she thought divorce 
a good thing; she was in the third year of the Eastern Female 
High School, and she might go to Goucher. She read Zippy 
Stories in secret, and knew all about the Decameron. 

“I think pop’s going to take us all up to Pen Mar, for a 
month,” she announced with a superior air. “We all like the 
mountains so much more than the seashore. It’s just a bit 
more exclusive and—and—well, intimate, you know.” 

“It depends a lot on the figure you’ve got,” said Elsie, with 
another giggle. “Oh, boy!” 

A deep silence suddenly drenched the room. Every one 
else considered that Elsie had made a wrong remark; it was 
out of place for a young girl to say such a thing. 

Old Mrs. Turner, Charley’s mother, who hadn’t understood 
the joke, saved the situation by remarking: 


22 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


“It’s nice up in Pen Mar. I was there myself once. It 
was about twenty or thirty years ago. Charley was only a 
little fellow in skirts. We all went on an excursion; I think 
the fare was seventy-two cents round trip. Lord, it was 
certainly a hot day!” 

Mrs. Turner often talked about that famous trip of hers 
to Pen Mar. It had been the one adventure in her life. She 
had never been anywhere else in particular. Washington was 
only forty miles away, but she had never been there. She 
had always been poor. Her husband had been employed in 
a glass factory at Locust Point. All her adventures were 
spiritual; she had the most amazing religious experiences, 
and got up and bared them boldly at Wednesday night prayer 
meeting in First Baptist Church. She was always dreaming 
that Jesus Christ came into her bedroom, as a bridegroom. 

“And praise God!” she would cry, “my lamp was lighted 
and I was wide awake! For I knew not at what hour the 
Son of Man would appear!” 

Mrs. Turner regarded Sheldon’s “In His Steps,” or “What 
Would Jesus Do?” as the literary epic of the age. For young 
girls she recommended “A World of Girls” by Meade. She 
believed in the Apostles’ Creed; she believed in the Holy 
Bible; she believed in the Baptist Church; and she believed 
that whom God had joined together, no man might put 
asunder. 

“Yes, Pen Mar’s all right, and Cape May’s all right, but 
there are lots of places that are better,” said another voice 
from the dark shadows of the room; a very precise and self- 
assured voice. It was Henry Strieker speaking, the brother 
of Clara and Cissie. He was a thoroughly godly young man, 
although he did squint out of his west eye. Some day he 
would inherit the Atlass Brush Company. He was a member 
of the Baraca Bible Class, Junior, in the First Baptist Church, 
and was his father’s right hand man in business. 


THE MAN UPSTAIRS 23 

“You folks haven’t traveled much,” he pursued, musingly. 
“It’s a great world, you must remember.” 

“I guess you think you’ve seen the world,” sneered Elsie, 
who secretly admired her cousin. 

“I’ve been to Philadelphia!” exploded Henry indignantly. 

Elsie subsided. 

“Travel broadens the mind,” remarked John Strieker pon¬ 
derously. 

It was right that John Strieker should speak ponderously, 
for he was a ponderous man, physically, mentally and in 
public importance. He was a typical old-line business man 
of the city, thoroughly awake. Straight back to old General 
John Strieker he traced his ancestry. 

Every typical citizen knew that General John Strieker com¬ 
manded the valiant American forces at the celebrated battle 
of North Point. Hardly any one outside of the city knows 
that there was a battle of North Point, but every typical 
citizen inside the town knows it from infancy. Before the 
marble court house there is a slender shaft of gray which is 
known as the Battle Monument. It is a favorite allusion of 
orators, and a severe consecration in the public schoolrooms. 

John Strieker was a direct descendant of the illustrious old 
General. Moreover, there was a street named after the 
family; John Strieker never quite got over it when the niggers 
captured it and made it their very own. 

But ancestry was not the only claim John Strieker raised 
to importance. He was ponderously important in his own 
right. He was a self-made man, and he had made a good 
job of it, if he did say so who shouldn’t. 

John was a very large man, with a round grizzly head, and 
drooping ruddy cheeks, mottled and splotched with liver 
secrets. But his attitude was jovial and boisterous. His 
paunch helped out his jesting attitude. He was a man who 
made an artistic combination of being at once jovial and 


24 BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

ponderously important; a benignant brush manufacturer, with 
a large balance in the bank, who laughed loudly at his own 
jokes, and always said a few wise words as he passed by. 

A critical eye might have observed a rapacious slant to his 
jowl. But few critical eyes looked at John Strieker. He 
owned a big business; he was the sole proprietor of the 
largest brush factory in the eastern part of the state. His 
daughter Clara was boastful of the fact that she had never 
bought a brush since she was married; her father gave her 
the pick of the factory. He was a member of the Chamber 
of Commerce, the Rotarians, the Ancient Free and Accepted 
Masons, the Mystic Shrine, the Merchants and Manufacturers 
Association, the Travelers and Merchants Association, the 
Builders’ Exchange, and was a leading light in the First 
Baptist Church. Frequently he was appointed an honorary 
pall-bearer at the funeral of a well known business man. 

He was a typical citizen of the better class. 

It was John Strieker’s inner hope that the day would come 
when he would be written up in The American Magazine . 
Being a self-made man; started without a nickel, and now 
look at him; he believed implicitly in the equality of oppor¬ 
tunity, and the current optimistic doctrines of success for 
young men. He talked in quotation marks, italics, capital 
letters and exclamation points. 

His humor, which was noisy and often, came from the 
comic papers. All the jokes that he could understand, he 
memorized and later got them off at delicate moments when 
he fancied a joke would help matters. He had invested in 
all the courses in “Pelmanism,” “Will Power” and “The Mas¬ 
ter Key” and practiced them all. 

He was one of the minor heroes of the city, but down in 
Talbott County, where he came from, he was a legendary god. 

John’s wife was sitting beside him as he delivered the 
ponderous sentiment that travel broadens the mind. She was 


THE MAN UPSTAIRS 25 

a silent and adoring woman, but with odd moments of un¬ 
explained bitterness. 

“Do you think travel is necessary for success?” asked 
Elsie innocently. 

“No,” replied John judiciously. “I do not. A man should 
not stare up the steps of success. He should step up the 
stairs of success!” 

“Oh, boy!” said Elsie admiringly. 

A fluttering hum of admiration murmured from one to 
another. 

“Gee, pop, that’s a good one!” exclaimed Henry admir¬ 
ingly. Early in life Henry had discovered the golden prin¬ 
ciple of success. It was simply to admire what father said. 
“Is that an original?” 

“That is an original,” confessed John modestly. He did 
not remember that he had come across it on an advertising 
calendar. He memorized epigrammatic banalities whenever 
he could understand them, and then forgot their origin. He 
had a way of enunciating them that stamped them as strictly 
Strieker. It was a phrase of which he was proud; his brushes 
bore as their trade-mark, “Strickly Strieker!” 

“The whole question of success,” he continued, with a note 
of magniloquence in his tones, “is answered in ourselves. 
We must try to be true to ourselves—and do something in 
this world. Wise men try to do something. Fools try to do 
somebody /” 

“Oh, boy!” murmured Elsie. 

“Was that an original?” gasped Henry. 

“That, too,” confessed Mr. Strieker, “was an original.” 

Inspired by these comments, and by the manifest impres¬ 
sion made upon the others, John continued: 

“We have only to be patient, and work hard, and keep 
wide awake! That is the ticket! Patience, industry—and 
keeping wide awake!” 

“I don’t know about that,” cut in Clara, bitter and crisp. 


26 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

“God knows I’ve been patient, and there ain’t anybody can’t 
say I don’t work hard, and I’m awake from morn till night, 
and what do I get out of it, I’d like to know? I’d like some¬ 
body to tell me that. I feel like a donkey on a treadmill. 
He works hard and he’s patient, and he keeps awake. He’s 
a jackass and so am I, I guess.” 

Her father felt obscurely offended. He was dealing in 
pleasing quotations, merely, and he resented such a personal 
and unnecessary contradiction. But he contented himself 
with a bushy clearing of his throat, a pounding of his fist 
on the arm of his chair, and the remark: 

“A lazy man is as useless as a corpse —and he takes up 
more room!” 

Before Henry had the opportunity to inquire if that were 
an original, they all heard a most peculiar sound. 

Rodeheaver’s record had been locked up for the night, the 
negro babies were asleep in their greasy cradles, and the 
chatter of the front-step family groups was now subdued. 
A hush was creeping slowly upon the neighborhood, when a 
long-drawn, piercing wail came from the upper regions of 
the house. 

“What on earth is that?” demanded Mr. Strieker. His 
wife had jumped at the eerie sound; the others were flutter¬ 
ing inquiringly. 

“That’s Charley!” announced Clara, in a tone that added, 
“Now you can see what I put up with!” 

“Charley!” repeated Mr. Strieker incredulously. “How is 
it possible for Charley to make a noise like that?” 

“Oh-h-h, his latest crazy fit!” declared Clara waspishly. 
“Nobody will ever understand what I put up with from that 
man. No one ever will know, I guess.” 

Ct But how can he make a noise like that?” insisted John. 

“It’s a thing that looks like a potato,” explained Clara. 

“Looks like a what, Clara?” 


THE MAN UPSTAIRS 


27 


“A potato!” 

“A potato?” 

“A potato!” 

“But how can anything look like a potato?” 

“Well, it does, that’s all. It’s made out of wood. He 
stole a dollar bill out of my pocketbook for it!” 

“A dollar bill for a wooden potato?” 

“Yes!” 

“Well, Clara, I don’t-” 

“I forget what he calls it,” cried Clara, as if the last 
vestige of her patience were carried away on the streaking 
strains of wailing music that came filtering down the stairs. 

“He says it’s music.” 

“Well, I must say, Charley has peculiar ways sometimes,” 
remarked Mr. Strieker searching through his pockets for a 
toothpick. 

“Sometimes?” 

Clara’s voice was belligerent, with the beat and throb of 
her sick headache. 

“I wish to the Lord it was only sometimes. It’s all the 
time, let me tell you. Day in, day out, from morn to night, 
it’s always something with Charley. Charley ain’t like any¬ 
body else!” 

An embarrassed silence settled over the company. They all 
hoped Clara would go on and tell them more of her domestic 
difficulties. But they didn’t want to say anything. 

“Henry,” said John, after the pause had risen to a very 
shriek of silence, “I think the girls would like some soda 
water. Suppose you all take a walk around to Lafayette 
Square, and step in at the drug store on your way back. 
Here’s fifty cents! Have a good time.” 

There were grumblings, but they went. 

Left in the dark parlor together, plying their fans, were 
Clara, her father and mother, and old Mrs. Turner. 


28 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

“Well, Clara,” said Mr. Strieker, after the voices of the 
younger ones had departed with them up the street, “you said 
you had something you wanted to talk with me about. What 
was it, daughter?” 

“Him, of course,” remarked Clara tartly. “Who else?” 

“What’s the matter with Charley?” asked Mr. Strieker. 

“What ain’t the matter with him?” demanded Clara. 
“That’s what I want to know. He’s acting mighty queer, I 
want to tell you!” 

“He is?” 

“Yes, he is!” 

“Charley’s a good boy, if he is queer,” inserted old Mrs. 
Turner dutifully. 

“Oh, he’s fine!” said Clara. “There he is upstairs now, 
when he ought to be down here like any other man with his 
family—up there blowing into a wooden potato!” 

“He’s a good boy,” insisted old Mrs. Turner. 

“Good as long as there ain’t nothing around the house to 
be done. He’s the laziest man God ever let breathe the breath 
of life. Just let there be something to be done around the 
house, and then watch little Charley. He can’t drive a nail 
straight, and if you make him do it, he mashes his thumb nail 
and curses so hard it makes your flesh creep. It’s just awful 
to listen to his language. He won’t turn his hand to a living 
thing. ‘Get a nigger and give him a quarter,’ he says. Wants 
me to get a nigger every time I want a trunk moved or a, 
curtain hung or a window pane put in. A lot of quarters I’ve 
got to give to niggers. Charley’s just lazy, but that ain’t all. 
He’ll sit there, night after night, day in and day out, and see 
me washing the dishes and never lift a hand to wipe a plate. 
Not even a cup and saucer. Sits there with his feet propped 
up in the dining room and hums!” 

“Hums?” repeated John. 

“Yes, hums!” said Clara. 

“Charley always did that, even when he was a little boy,” 


THE MAN UPSTAIRS 29 

said old Mrs. Turner. “He closes his eyes and hums. Tunes 
I never heard. I think maybe he makes them up. Clara’s 
right about that. That’s Charley!” 

“I think I’ve heard him hum,” remarked Mr. Strieker 
thoughtfully. “I wonder why he hums?” 

“So do I,” said Clara. 

“Charley always was different,” volunteered Mrs. Turner, 
not without a tinge of disapproving frankness. “He never 
was like other children. When he was little, I used to put 
him out front, but pretty soon he would be ringing the front 
doorbell and wanting to come inside again, to play by him¬ 
self. He always played games different from anybody else. 
He used to make up plays and act them on the kitchen table 
with his toy soldiers; he’d make out it was a stage in a 
theayter. His poor father and me used to worry a lot about 
him. But you couldn’t do anything with him. I used to 
say he wasn’t never weaned!” 

“Something ought to be done with him,” argued Mr. Strieker 
slowly. “And I think I know what it is. He needs waking 
up!” 

“You bet he needs waking up!” said Clara. 

“He’s good to you, though?” asked her father. 

“He don’t beat me, if that’s what you mean. But he does 
lots worse. He don’t talk to me. He looks at me with funny 
eyes, and says things I don’t know what he means by. Day in 
and day out, he’ll sit around and not say a word, or if he 
does say a word, it’s some foolishness that hasn’t got any 
sense to it. I sometimes don’t think he’s right! Once I found 
him with tears in his eyes!” 

“Tears in his eyes?” repeated Mr. Strieker aghast. 

“Yes!” 

A sudden gleam came into John Strieker’s eyes; a gleam of 
shrewd suspicion. 

“Clara,” he said slowly, “I’ve got a little theory about 


30 BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

Charley. I can’t tell you what it is, yet, but I am going to 
find out!” 

“If you can find out, it’s more than I can. I’ve given it up. 
Sometimes I am about ready to jump off the Light Street 
wharf. I wonder how you stand him down at the office.” 

“Well, now, I must admit that Charley and I have our dis¬ 
agreements. I think he sort of takes advantage of me because 
I’m his father-in-law. But he is your husband and I always 
try to remember that fact, Clara. The trouble is with Charley, 
he hasn’t caught the spirit of our organization. We’re a go- 
getting brush factory, I want to tell you. We’re wide awake. 
And Charley is half asleep half the time. Day dreaming! 
I guess I ought to have a little talk with Charley; a really 
serious talk. He ought to be getting along. He ought to be 
making more than twenty-five dollars a week by this time!” 

“Hmph! I just guess he ought!” said Clara. “But I know 
he ain’t worth any more, pop! But he could be! Charley’s 
smart all right!” 

“Charley always was smart,” remarked old Mrs. Turner. 

“He lacks diplomacy! He lacks tact! He needs some¬ 
body to wake him up! There’s no doubt about that,” decided 
Mr. Strieker. “Sometimes he says mean things to me. About 
how we run things down there. Now we know how to run 
our business, and he ought to be helping, not criticizing. I 
don’t allow criticism from my employees, even if it happens 
to be my son-in-law. That’s business. You’ve got to have 
discipline!” 

“Oh-h-h, I don’t know!” exclaimed Clara. “Day in, day 
out, morning in and night out, it’s the same thing. He’s 
always talking about the wonderful things he would like to 
do! All he wants, he says, is an opportunity!” 

“Man makes his own opportunity,” quoted Mr. Strieker, 
with finality. “I made mine. And there’s plenty of room for 
Charley to make his, right in my plant! Why, look at the 
men at the top of my business now! They’re men who wanted 


THE MAN UPSTAIRS 


31 


to get along in the world. They are trained men. And that’s 
what I want —trained men! They are the ones I’ve got my 
eye on, I want to tell you. When I know that a fellow in 
my plant is taking a correspondence school course at night, 
I’ve got my eye on him, I want to tell you.” 

“I wouldn’t mind,” explained Clara, “if Charley took the 
money to spend on anything like that, where I could see a 
chance of getting it back. But he spends it on nonsense. 
Books of poetry! Just think of that! I’ve been wearing the 
same old suit for the last three years and he buys little thin 
books with the money I need for my back! He doesn’t care 
a thing about money; he’ll waste it on any fool idea he 
happens to get in his head! Look at the hat I’m wearing! 
I’ve had it made over twice, until I am sick of looking at the 
durn thing!” 

Mr. Strieker cleared his throat. 

“Well, why don’t you have it out with him right now,” 
urged Clara. “I can’t do anything with him. I’ve talked and 
talked and talked, day in, day out, morning in and night out, 
and what good did it do? Why don’t you go upstairs and 
talk to him?” 

“Talking to Charley never did no good,” advised his mother 
drearily. 

“Well,” said Mr. Strieker, “perhaps it was because he 
wasn’t talked to right. It isn’t what you say, Mrs. Turner— 
it’s how you say it! 9 ’ 

“Mr. Strieker would know how to approach him,” declared 
Mrs. Strieker, breaking her long silence in defense of her 
husband. 

“Of course he would,” agreed Clara. 

“He simply needs waking up. That’s all!” said Mr. Strieker 
positively. “I’ll go up and have a talk with him!” 

As he mounted the stairs, a strain of weird melody drawn 
from the very soul of the dollar wooden potato floated 
tantalizingly downward from the upper darkness. 


CHAPTER THREE 


BRUSHES AND SHOES AND DREAMS 

Charley Turner was playing upon an ocarino. 

The resemblance of this undeniably elemental musical 
instrument to a potato may have been a fancy in the mind 
of Clara. Certainly its lines were neither graceful nor geo¬ 
metrical, nor did its music commend itself to- the ears of the 
judicious. 

Charley favored it because he considered it better than his 
own humming, and less physically exhausting. Even that, 
however, was debatable. It was louder, certainly. 

He was sitting on the side of a chair, playing the thing 
with a perspiring delight which any one would have found it 
difficult to understand. The room was a small store-place, 
next to the bathroom, at the extreme rear of the second floor. 
Its one window opened on a narrow court, running the length 
of the house, and the hot, moist air that came in, meeting the 
pollutions of the jumpy gas-flame, made the place suffocating. 
The walls of the room were covered with weird drawings in 
crayon; when Charley was not playing on the ocarino, he 
was drawing pictures on the wall or on scraps of paper. 

In order to be comfortable, Charley had removed his shoes 
and his stockings; his collar was off, and his shirt turned 
down exposing his chest; his sleeves were rolled to the elbows, 
as if he were a magician, and his ocarino a strange master¬ 
piece of his mystic art. 

Charley was not a bad-looking boy. He was not more 
than twenty-three years old, and the curl of his rust-red hair, 

32 


BRUSHES AND SHOES AND DREAMS 33 


the cleft in his chin, and the impish tilt of his nose gave him 
an air even more youthful. His eyes were larger than most 
men’s eyes; round and with a changing luster of aqua-marine; 
sometimes sea-blue, or again green as the morning sea. There 
was the twinkle of incorrigible jest somewhere in them; his 
eyes were unlike the typical eyes of the people who knew him. 

With the ocarino at rest against his lips and cheek, he was 
at perfect peace with the universe, although now and then 
his fingers were lifted from the holes in the bulging sides of 
the toy, to bash a mosquito, or fleck away a drop of perspira¬ 
tion from his eyes. He had discovered that the ocarino could 
respond most artistically, if one but gave it a chance. All it 
needed was an Oriental melody to make it sing. Its weird 
wail gave him a thrill; there was something deep and satis¬ 
fying in blowing into it and making The Song of India come 
out of it. 

All his life, Charley had wished to make music and to 
draw pictures. His parents had been too poor to give him 
art or music lessons. He had never learned to play anything 
beyond a sheet of tissue paper laid across a comb, or to draw 
anything other than weird sketches, somehow startling and 
eloquent. His humming had kept him musically content 
until, a week before, he had discovered the ocarino. 

It was an event in his life; he had completely mastered its 
technique. 

At the most poignantly exquisite thrill of the Rimsky- 
Korsakoff air, he heard a rattle at the knob of the door, and 
was forced to pause. 

His father-in-law, John Strieker, was upon him. 

“Helloa, Charley!” shouted Mr. Strieker, with a hilarious 
swing of his arm. “What are you trying to do up here? 
Sweat yourself to death?” 

“Good evening,” returned Charley, leaning back in his 
chair, and extending his bare feet impudently. He wriggled 


34 BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

his toes good-naturedly in the general direction of his father- 
in-law. 

“Why didn’t you come downstairs and sit with us?” in¬ 
quired John genially, as he sat down on a trunk and stared 
in wonderment. “Henry was down there, and Cissie and your 
Cousin Elsie. We all missed you!” 

“That was kind. I thought I would bore you to death. And 
besides, I wanted to write a song!” 

“What?” 

“Yes, really.” 

“Now what do you know about writing songs?” 

“Not a damn thing!” 

“Well, then-” 

“I know! But sometimes we can’t keep from doing things, 
even though we don’t know how to do them. Get me?” 

“No, I can’t say I do, Charley!” 

“Well, anyhow! This afternoon I was in the ten cent store 
—down on Lexington Street. They are selling little leather 
books in there that are a wonderful bargain; only ten cents 
apiece. I was crossing an aisle when I suddenly halted, 
absolutely dumbfounded!” 

“Shoplifter?” 

“No. A nun!” 

“A Catholic sister?” 

“Yep! God! You should have seen her. She was stand¬ 
ing there, in the center of the aisle. Her wimple was thrown 
back a bit, the whiteness of her forehead was like snow, and 
in her eyes was a mist. I swear there were tears in her eyes! 
Think of that! Tears in a nun’s eyes—in a ten cent store!” 

“What was she crying for?” 

“Ah, that was my question, too. I stood there, looking at 
her—she was standing very still and straight, and her slender 
white hands were held out in front of her, as if in petition. 
They trembled a little, those soft, womanly hands. And on 



BRUSHES AND SHOES AND DREAMS 35 


her face was the wishful look of a little girl. She was breath¬ 
ing deeply, as if the fragrance of her youth were near. 

“And then—” Charley rose in his excitement, and bent 
over Mr. Strieker, his voice husky with the memory of a 
sweet and sad surprise—“and then I saw what it was! She 
was at the perfume counter!” 

There was a moment’s silence. 

“Yes?” prodded Mr. Strieker. “At the perfume counter?” 

Charley laughed gayly as he dashed his hand across his 
wet forehead. 

“Well, that’s why I want to write a song. I want to put 
into music what I saw in that dead girl’s eyes!” 

“She wasn’t dead, was she?” demanded Mr. Strieker, be-; 
ginning to be exasperated. 

“No!” grinned Charley forgivingly. “Only I think she 
died,—I think that was her last moment alive. Or—I don’t 
know—perhaps—well—See ? ” 

He twiddled the ocarino happily on the end of his big toe, 
while John sought for his handkerchief in a confused and 
troubled silence. 

“I don’t understand you, Charley,” confessed John, after a 
little while. “And what’s more, I don’t think you understand 
me. We don’t understand each other. Now that’s not right, 
Charley. We ought to understand each other better.” 

“Am I such a mystery?” asked Charley banteringly. 

“You sure are, to a lot of people. Take our Miss Simmons, 
down at the office, for an example. She told Henry the other 
day that you insulted her.” 

“Preposterous! I-” 

“Well, now, you told her something that hurt her feelings. 
You told her you were tired of seeing her wear nothing but 
blue all the time.” 

“That’s right. I am tired of it.” 


36 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


“But Charley, it’s none of your business what color she 
wears. And blue is a sensible business tint.” 

“It isn’t quite a tint,” remonstrated Charley. “But why 
doesn’t she change it, now and then? For the last three 
years—day in, day out, as Clara says—I’ve been looking at 
that old maid in a blue dress, until I’m tired of it. She 
wears a blue serge dress until it wears out, and then she buys 
another one just like it. It gets tiresome. It makes me 
wonder, sometimes, whether she ever changes her underwear.” 

“My God, Charley! You forget yourself!” 

“I beg your pardon. I suppose I do. But why not frankly 
admit what we think? I heard Miss Simmons debating with 
another clerk one afternoon about the value of citrate of 
magnesia for an ailing poodle dog, and I’ve never cared for 
her since.” 

“They shouldn’t talk about such subjects during business 
hours,” agreed John. . . . “But look here, Charley. I want 
to have a frank talk with you. There’s a lot of things we 
ought to talk over. Did you ever realize that you were mak¬ 
ing us all very unhappy—especially Clara?” 

A shade came and went in Charley’s eyes; the shadow of 
a doubt. 

“Has Clara been complaining?” he asked quietly. 

“No! Not at all! But I can see by her manner that she 
is worried. She’s ambitious, Charley. She wants you to get 
along. She wants new clothes once in a while like other 
women; an excursion down to Tolchester, the movies and 
little things like that. You ought to be making more money.” 

“I wish I was.” 

“You can’t get anywhere by wishing,” declared John 
severely. “That’s the trouble with you, Charley. You wish 
all the time, when you ought to wake up and do something!” 

“I thought I was a pretty good wisher,” said Charley with 
a grin. 

“You can’t push yourself ahead by patting yourself on the 


BRUSHES AND SHOES AND DREAMS 37 


back,” quoted John oracularly. “The road to success is 
slippery. A man needs a lot of sand!” 

“Good!” applauded Charley, his voice remarkably like 
Henry’s. “Was that an original? Or was that in one of the 
syndicate editorials?” 

John elected to ignore this. Pursing his lips together, and 
pounding a red palm with his fist, he said: 

“What you need, Charley, is somebody to wake you up. 
Now I am going to give you some pretty plain talk. You’re 
a failure, and I don’t care whether it hurts you to hear it or 
not, you’re a disgraceful failure! You’re poor. Your wife 
is ashamed of her clothes. You ought to be ashamed to have 
your wife ashamed. You ought to provide for her.” 

“Well, why the hell don’t you raise my salary?” retorted 
Charley cheerfully. 

“Because you’re not worth it!” grated John, delighted at 
the opening. “You’re on the same level as any other of my 
employees. You’ve got to wake up and deliver. You don’t 
realize how you’re drifting. Man after man has passed you 
at the office. They were trained men and I, like any other 
wide-awake employer, had my eye on them. But what are 
you doing with your spare time? Playing a wooden potato! 
Reading verses! Looking at Catholic sisters in a ten cent 
store. You ought to be ashamed of yourself!” 

Charley stared at him thoughtfully. His gaze was puzzled. 
After a moment, he said: 

“Intellectually, I agree with every word you say. Spirit¬ 
ually I reply, ‘Damned rot’!” 

“Charley, what do you mean?” 

“I mean that I know I’m guilty, but I don’t feel guilty. 
Can you explain that?” 

“No, I can’t!” 

“Neither can I!” 

“But you see-” fretted Mr. Strieker uncomfortably. 



38 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

“I do see,” interrupted Charley earnestly. “I know that 
you believe every word you say. I know I am a dog. I know 
I lead poor Clara one hell of a life. I don’t know how she 
stands me—day in, day out, as she says. It’s just plain hell.” 

“Well, what’s the matter with you?” 

“That’s just it! What is the matter with me? I know what 
I ought to do. I know I ought to learn all about the brush 
business; to make a brushy background of my whole life; 
eat brushes, drink brushes, sleep brushes, dream brushes—I 
ought to brush up on brushes, eh—that’s an original!” 

“Can’t you be serious, Charley?” 

“No, that’s another thing wrong with me. I can’t be serious 
about the things you people are serious about—and God 
knows I can’t be foolish about the things you people are 
foolish about.” 

“There is no occasion for profanity,” said Mr. Strieker. 
“And besides, I was not aware that I am foolish, as you say, 
about anything particularly.” 

“This is the way it is,” said Charley, a plaintive note of 
self-ridicule creeping into his voice. “When I am working, I 
want to be playing. And when I am playing, I want to be 
working.” 

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” quoted 
Mr. Strieker. “But no man can succeed until he learns how 
to concentrate!” 

“Exactly. If I ever found anything I liked, I would con¬ 
centrate on it. But the only thing I can concentrate on is 
drawing and music!” 

“Well!” said Mr. Strieker, disparagingly. “Drawing is all 
right in its place. So is music. But life isn’t music and 
pictures, Charley!” 

“No, God damn it,” replied Charley. “But it ought to be!” 

“We don’t seem to be getting anywhere,” complained Mr. 
Strieker after another painful pause. 


BRUSHES AND SHOES AND DREAMS 39 


“I sometimes wonder if I shouldn’t get out of the brush 
business,” remarked Charley, with a wicked glint in his eyes 
which John missed. “I do not believe I have found my proper 
metier in the brush business!” 

“What is your—your what-you-callum?” asked Mr. Strieker 
sarcastically. 

“I have often wished I was a shoe clerk. I wouldn’t mind 
being a shoe clerk half so much as I mind being a brush 
clerk. I could occupy myself with interesting speculations, 
if I were a shoe clerk. It would be fascinating!” 

“Charley!” gasped Mr. Strieker, aghast. “Do you mean— 
are you trying to tell me—is it women’s legs you’re thinking 
of?” 

Charley chuckled. 

“No! Though, of course, one would see a lot of ankles. 
What I meant, really, was the play offered the imagination. 
Just fancy! Selling shoes! I would sell a girl a pair of 
them, and then, when she had gone, I could wonder where 
her feet, shod in those shoes, would carry her. Perhaps to 
a tryst, under the golden cusp of a scimitar moon. On 
foreign shores and ships, maybe; perhaps to an assignation; 
she might even wear them into the grave. I would never tire 
of things to think about, if I were a shoe clerk.” 

He paused and twiddled the ocarino on his thumb. 

“But what the hell can I think about brushes!” he shouted 
vindictively. “Brushes! Whatever they are, they are going 
into dirt. Toothbrushes on people’s teeth; blacking brushes 
on people’s shoes; scrub brushes on ugly kitchen floors. 
Brushes! Dirt! I shut my eyes and hate them!” 

“You get your bread and butter out of brushes,” said Mr. 
Strieker with deadly emphasis, his cheeks flushed a dark ruby 
—the red flush of wounded pride. 

“The brush business is an honorable business,” he said, 
throatily. “I am proud to say that I manufacture Strickly 
Strieker brushes.” 


40 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


“Well, what if you are? I don’t like them any the better 
for that. I hate them all the worse for that. There is some¬ 
thing in me that tells me I shall not handle brushes all my 
life. You think I’m a disgraceful failure, do you? You 
think I’m a no-account loafer. Well, what if I am? It’s 
because I hate brushes! You love them. Well, love them 
then. But don’t ask me to love them. I love something else!” 

“What else is it?” 

“A dream! There is a dream in my heart!” 

“That’s the trouble with you,” exclaimed Mr. Strieker. “I 
told you you needed somebody to wake you up. Now look 
here, Charley. I don’t want to quarrel with you. I want to 
help you. I want to come to an understanding with you. 
How much money have you and Clara put aside?” 

“We’ve got three dollars in an iron bank, in the back of 
the bureau drawer.” 

“Goodness gracious! At your age I had seven hundred and 
forty-two dollars and eighteen cents!” 

“And you’ve still got it all,” smiled Charley. 

“Every penny of it! And you ought to have that much, 
doubled, because the cost of living has doubled since that 
time. Now what is the reason I could do that, and you 
can’t?” 

Charley at first appeared not to have heard the question. 
He remained, his brows contracted. Suddenly he stood up, 
a flash in his eyes. 

“Because everything is wrong,” he said. “Because all my 
life—day in and day out—I’m doing the things that I have to 
do. I want to make music, write verses, carve marble, paint 
upon canvas. But I can’t. I don’t know how to do any of 
those things. I never had the time to learn. Instead, I have 
to stock brushes and keep track of them in your warehouse. 
There’s something in me that cries out against all that. I 
hear that cry all the time. And there’s a promise in it; the 
promise of a better time ahead for me. Everything fine and 


BRUSHES AND SHOES AND DREAMS 41 


beautiful that I want is coming to me. It may sound foolish 
of me to say it, but I just know I am going to do something 
splendid that the world will like. I can shut my eyes and 
see their faces looking to me, waiting for me to do the thing 
I was born to do—the thing they want and need!” 

“Whose faces?” 

“The faces of all the people of all the world!” 

“And what is it that you’re going to do for all the people 
of all the world?” 

“I don’t know!” 

Mr. Strieker threw back his head, so that his bushy mus¬ 
taches hung down over his mouth like that of a walrus. 

“You’re bughouse!” he snorted. “That sort of talk makes 
me sick. You think you’re somebody great—why, you can’t 
even earn a decent living for your wife. You! The world 
waiting for you? Everybody kow-towing to you! As if you 
were anybody to kow-tow to. That’s the worst talk I’ve ever 
listened to from a young squirt that can’t even support his 
wife. Now, I’m tired of talking to you, young man! My 
patience is just about exhausted. I am going to tell you 
something once and for all. As your employer, I want you 
to apply yourself to business hereafter, and be of some value 
to the firm that pays your wages. And as the father of your 
wife, I want to tell you that if you can’t take better care of 
her, you’re not going to have any wife any longer.” 

Charley stood, smiling, but white. 

“As one of your employees,” he said, “I herewith resign, 
my resignation to take effect immediately. As your son-in- 
law, I advise you to keep out of my family affairs, and attend 
to your own business!” 

“Resign!” 

Mr. Strieker’s voice shouted the word like a jest. 

“What do you plan to do—starve to death?” 

“Not yet! I mustn’t forget my dream!” 

The door was suddenly flung open and Clara strode in. 


CHAPTER FOUR 


GETTING TO THE BOTTOM OF IT 

“What’s the matter?” asked Clara. 

Her voice was accusingly sharp; her eyes searched the 
flushed faces of her father and her husband. Upon them she 
had detected at once the red evidences of a quarrel. 

“Nothing’s the matter, Clara,” protested Mr. Strieker, 
huskily. “Charley and I have just been talking!” 

“There is something the matter, too,” said Clara, with an 
impatient gesture of her hand. “Charley, what have you been 
saying to pop?” 

Charley twirled the ocarino guiltily. 

“I’ve resigned!” he announced. 

“You’ve been fired!” exclaimed Clara, glacing at her father 
as if she were trapped. “Oh, pop, give him another chance!” 

“I haven’t fired him,” her father answered, lowering his 
voice, and glacing uneasily at the open door. “Firing is not 
your father’s way. I try to develop men!” 

His weighty assurance returned to him with the utterance 
of those last words. His shoulders went back, and his eyes 
flashed. 

“Charley,” he said impressively, “you lost your head just 
now. A man’t can’t lose his head and keep it, too. Now-” 

“What did you resign for, you big fool?” blazed Clara. 
“Haven’t I got trouble enough on my hands, slaving like 
some nigger servant girl for you, without having you throw 
up your job? What did you do it for, I say?” 

She came closer to him, thrusting her thin, tense face up 
42 


GETTING TO THE BOTTOM OF IT 43 


toward his own. Across her thin cheeks was spreading a 
scarlet rash of rage. Charley did not reply. 

“What did you do it for?” she cried again, her voice break¬ 
ing into a moan, her pale lips twisting impotently. The 
sound of her own voice filled her with nervous shame; she 
glanced over her shoulder at the open door. Swiftly and in 
deadly silence she crossed the room; she closed the door with 
a mechanical caution, that no angry slam might reach the 
family downstairs. 

When it was safely shut, she began to cry. 

On the edge of an ancient trunk she slouched, her hands 
clutching at the frayed ends of broken leather straps, while 
her thin, hunched shoulders quivered and the silent tears 
dribbled down her cheeks. 

“Why do I always have to have something like this?” she 
wailed. “All I came up here for was to ask him to go to 
the bakery and get some ice cream! And this is what I get! 
Now what will we do? Oh, my God!” 

Mr. Strieker glared at Charley, not in reproach, but in 
appeal. Something had to be done; they couldn’t let Clara 
go on like that. 

“I didn’t come over here for anything like this, either,” 
said Mr. Strieker. “I didn’t bring the family over here, ex¬ 
pecting a fight. We were simply paying a little friendly visit. 
That was all. I don’t want Charley to resign.” 

He was making secretive, pawing gestures with his hands 
toward Charley, beseeching signals of distress. He wanted 
Charley to do something, or say something, that would make 
Clara stop crying. 

Of this, Charley was quite as anxious as he. Nothing quite 
so annoyed Charley as Clara, when she was maudlin in tears. 
He would pretend to any compromise; utter any absurdity 
to dry her eyes and silence her grief. 

“Why, Clara,” he said, eyeing the ocarino, as if anxious to 
placate it under the circumstances, “you haven’t anything to 


44 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


cry about. Really, I haven’t thrown up my job. I was only 
telling your father that I thought I might succeed better in 
some other line. I resigned, but my resignation doesn’t 
take effect until I land somewhere else. Isn’t that right, Mr. 
Strieker?” 

Mr. Strieker winked a massive eyelid and grinned mag- 
niloquently, as one crafty conspirator may, when it is wholly 
safe, grin at his confederate. 

“Absolutely!” he lied, with a bushy clearing of his throat. 
“All I want is for Charley to find his real work. No man 
can be happy if he is a square peg in a round hole. But I 
believe there’s a square hole somewhere for Charley. Do 
you hear that, Clara? Charley didn’t mean anything. He 
and I are perfect friends. We understand each other. Go 
on, now, Clara. It don’t amount to nothing. Go on in the 
bathroom, and wash your face!” 

Clara stood up, dejectedly. Her eyes were lowered, her 
lips were thinned to a line of unconscious martyrdom. One 
long-suffering glance she bestowed upon her husband. Then 
she slouched drearily into the bathroom, the door of which 
she dragged shut after her. 

A moment later they heard the splash and gurgle of water 
running in the wash-stand. 

“Now you see!” said Mr. Strieker severely. 

He came over to Charley, so that his voice would not reach 
Clara. 

“What do you want to make her miserable for?” 

“She likes to be miserable,” retorted Charley, without re¬ 
sentment. “It’s her peculiar form of pleasure.” 

“Nonsense! She’s awful sensitive, that’s all. She always 
was. Her feelings don’t take much to get hurt. They never 
did. You ought to remember that, Charley. Now look here, 
young man. I want you and me to be friends. You’re in 
the family, and there’s nothing worse than when relatives get 


GETTING TO THE BOTTOM OF IT 45 


to fighting each other. I know you love Clara, and I know 
Clara loves you. All you need is to wake up. And you’re 
going to wake up. I’m going to make it my business to see 
that you wake up. There’s a great future for you, Charley, if 
you wake up!” 

Charley’s smile was in a language which Mr. Strieker could 
not read. 

“If you will just apply yourself to business,” continued 
Mr. Strieker, warmly earnest and benevolent, “you can rise 
to the top. Just take a look at my boy, Henry. Why, there 
ain’t nothing about our business that boy don’t know. That’s 
the way you ought to be. It’s strictly up to you. You want 
to buckle down to the brush business, Charley; there’s where 
your future is waiting for you. Every man’s future is wait¬ 
ing for him, but he mustn’t keep it waiting too long. If you 
will do that, I’ll see that you get along, and you’ll be happy 
and Clara will be happy. And what more can you want than 
that?” 

He thrust out a red and hairy hand, and Charley entrusted 
his own hand into its damp but hearty clasp. The grip was 
unbroken when the bathroom door opened and Clara came 
out. 

She looked at Charley first, with some lessening of her 
disapproval. 

“Go get your shoes and socks on,” she said. “And for 
goodness sake put on a collar, too. I want you to go to the 
bakery and get me a quart of harlequin ice-cream, and a 
couple of dozen sugar cakes with chocolate icing.” 

The gas in the dining room had been lighted. 

In fluttering chiaroscuro it disclosed the golden quartered 
oak dining room set, bought at Hecht’s in the installment plan; 
a sideboard, with bulging belly and glued scrolls; a serving 
table, a round dining table, with three extra “leaves” stored 
in the hall closet, and four chairs, one of which had arms. 


46 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


Over the sideboard was hung a fruit picture; oranges, grapes, 
bananas and plums in a basket, the whole framed in mission 
wood of brown, streaked with green. Above the serving table 
was a companion picture, of a hanging string of dead fish. 
On the marble mantlepiece, above the Latrobe stove, was an 
imitation marble clock with faded gilt decorations. Long 
since it had ceased to tick. Near it was a plaster head of a 
laughing fat man, the top hollowed out, and filled now with 
a mixture of burnt matches and hairpins. There was also a 
snapshot of Cissie and Clara, laughing uproariously at some 
jest not disclosed. It had been taken at Tolchester. At one 
end of the room was a long, high couch, upholstered in faded 
green velour. An oak rocker with one arm missing was 
beside the window. 

Laid across the table was a white cloth, disfigured with a 
brown coffee stain. Seven plates were arranged in a circle, 
each with its slab of Neapolitan ice-cream; a plate for Mr. 
Strieker, one for his wife, one for Cissie, for Cousin Elsie, 
for Henry, for old Mrs. Strieker, and for Charley. 

Clara had not set a plate for herself. In a little while, 
some one would discover the omission. Clara would protest 
that she didn’t want any. A general protest would ensue; 
seven voices would plead with her to sit down and eat like 
the rest of them. Eventually she would agree, and then 
everybody would be contented. 

In the center of the table was a round, pressed-glass bowl, 
which had been given away as a premium at the opening of 
Bernheimer’s new store on West Fayette Street. The bowl 
was heaped with the sugar cakes, iced with chocolate. 

Clara was in the kitchen, making coffee, which was to be 
the liquid portion of the refreshments. 

“I think I’ll go back and see if I can help Clara,” remarked 
Mr. Strieker. 

A crafty observer might have suspected another motive 


GETTING TO THE BOTTOM OF IT 47 


behind the benevolent smile of Mr. Strieker, as he marched 
from the dining room into the kitchen. 

Clara was at the sink, holding the coffee pot under the 
flowing faucet. 

“Clara,” said her father, posing on his toes and then rock¬ 
ing back on his heels, “I just want to say one thing. Your 
father has got his eyes open. I don’t want you to get down 
in the mouth about anything at all. Everything is going to 
be all right—strictly all right!” 

“Nothing won’t ever be all right for me, I guess,” remarked 
Clara bitterly. 

“Yes, it will!” insisted her father, a note almost bashfully 
akin to tenderness in his voice. “There never was a human 
problem yet that couldn’t be solved. But all human prob¬ 
lems require thought. They demand concentration; the con¬ 
centration of a trained mind. A man has got to know how to 
think before he can think how ’ 9 

“Yes, pop!” agreed Clara. 

“I might as well drop you a hint, too, Clara. A hint to the 
wise is as good as a hit, you know. I’ve got my suspicions! 
All men are alike, you know!” 

“What do you mean?” 

Clara put down the coffee pot, and turned, her hands 
twisting her white starched apron. 

“Never mind what I mean—now. I just want to ask you 
one question, that’s all.” 

As Mr. Strieker paused for due dramatic emphasis, Clara 
carried the coffee pot over to the gas range, and set it in 
place. She struck a match, and turned the burner handle. 

“What is it?” she asked in a low voice. 

“Does Charley spend any of his spare time away from 
home?” 

The match went out in Clara’s hand. She remained, bent 
over the stove, her shoulders contracted, as she reflected. 


48 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

“He never comes home on Saturday afternoons,” she re¬ 
membered finally, lighting the gas. 

“Never?” 

“That’s what I said and that’s just what I meant, too. 
Never. Many’s the time he could have come home here and 
gone to market with me and help me to carry the basket. 
But not him! Week in and week out, Saturday afternoon in 
and Saturday afternoon out, he’s gone out God knows where. 
I don’t know where he goes or what he does with himself. 
In the library, I guess, with his nose buried in some old 
book!” 

“Never comes home on Saturday afternoons,” purred Mr. 
Strieker musingly. 

“What do you mean?” asked Clara. 

“We will soon be getting to the bottom of this affair. 
That’s what I mean. There’s something rotten in Sweden, 
Clara. Find out where Charley spends his Saturday after¬ 
noons—find that out—and you find out all!” 

Clara’s forehead was wrinkled into a painful frown. 

“I don’t understand,” she wailed. “What does all that 
talk mean, pop?” 

“It’s better for you not to understand until there is some¬ 
thing to understand. But to-night is Friday. To-morrow is 
Saturday. To-morrow afternoon is Saturday afternoon. Just 
leave it to your father. By to-morrow night, we shall all 
know something. . . . How are you feeling now, Clara?” 

She looked up at him in martyred bewilderment. 

“I’ve got a sick headache,” she complained. 

For some obscure reason, Mr. Strieker felt suddenly pro¬ 
voked. He went back into the dining room without further 
comment. 


CHAPTER FIVE 


“i WONDER IF THERE IS A WAY OUT?” 

Whenever company came to call on the Turners, Clara and 
Charley quarreled as soon as the company went home. 

The process was invariable. 

Somehow, Clara always felt weak and devitalized the mo¬ 
ment the door was closed upon departing guests. It was as 
if she had been supporting some galling strain during their 
visit; a strain which, when lifted by their going, left nothing 
behind it but physical and spiritual collapse. 

They quarreled within five minutes after Mr. and Mrs. 
Strieker, Henry, Cissie and Cousin Elsie, and old Mrs. Turner 
had gone. With sprightly jesting and promises of seeing 
each other soon again, and assurances of what a good time 
they all had had, they took their leave together. Charley 
closed and locked the windows in the front parlor, and shut 
the outside door. 

He and Clara were left alone in the house together. 

Clara did not speak. Instead, she threw herself into the 
one-armed rocking chair, cupped her palm under her sharp 
chin, and stared in dull malice at the soiled dishes left in 
ugly disarray upon the table. 

Charley smiled quietly. Clara always acted like this. 
Social intercourse demagnetized her, and left her sullen and 
hitter. To sit and brood thus was as much a part of her 
ritual as the ice-cream, the sugar cakes with the chocolate 
icing, and the coffee. 


49 


50 BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

“Tired?” he asked, with an attempt at sympathetic good 
humor. 

Clara sniffed contemptuously, but did not reply. 

“Let’s leave the dishes in the sink until morning. We’re 
both tired. And it’s sticky hot,” he suggested. 

Her glance was poisonous. 

“You low-down, worthless, good-for-nothing dog!” she 
cried. 

“Whew!” 

“The very idea of such carrying-on as you did to-night! A 
nigger wouldn’t behave the way you did!” 

“What did I do?” 

“You’ll get your reward, you just wait! You’ll suffer, 
young man. Some day you’ll have to suffer. And I hope 
you suffer good and hard, I’ll let you know. Good and hard! 
I hope you’ll suffer like you’ve made me suffer, day in and 
day out, since the day I married you. The very idea of such 
carrying-on!” 

“What carrying-on, as you phrase it, please?” 

“You know, all right. Sitting upstairs with the family all 
here, as if you were too good to associate with them. Your 
own father-in-law having to go upstairs and drag you down. 
And then you resign—throw the bread and butter he gives 
you and me right in his teeth. You dirty hound! Insults! 
Insults to me and insults to my family! All I know is your 
insults, day in and day out, and I haven’t forgotten one of 
them, do you understand that? Not one of them. You! 
You nasty thing, you’re just no good at all, that’s just what 
you are. It’s a wonder to me God lets you live. It’s a wonder 
to me he don’t strike you dead with lightning.” 

“I should consider it a signal honor, my dear—a recog¬ 
nition from the throne itself. Of course, I should like to 
delay the affair; I am not vulgarly overeager, but—to go out 
in a slender spiral of flame! It would be magnificent!” 

“There!” she screamed. “That’s it! That’s you! That’s 
the way you talk! God ain’t going to let you talk like that. 


“I WONDER IF THERE IS A WAY OUT?” 51 


forever. You might get your wish sooner than you expect it, 
young man!” 

The muscles of her face were in angry motion; she was 
thoroughly unbeautiful. Her appearance distressed the eyes 
of her husband. Once he had loved her for her physical 
charms; even now there were times when traces of her girl¬ 
hood glimmered in her like the gleams of retreating torches. 
In anger she was homely. Charley believed that each of her 
many quarrels left upon her features the imprint of a per¬ 
manent disfigurement. 

“/ can’t have anything in my life,” she was moaning. “I 
don’t know why I was ever born. I can’t even have my 
relatives come to see me once in a while. God knows they 
don’t come very often. I don’t have much company. And 
when somebody does come to see me, I’ve got to be humiliated 
by you. But it won’t go on forever! God will find a way!” 

A taunting laugh escaped Charley’s lips. It left him 
looking ashamed, as if he did not relish taunts, even from his 
own mouth. 

“I wonder!” he exclaimed tensely. “I wonder if there is 
a way. Oh, Clara, don’t you see how miserable we are? 
There ought to be a way—somewhere! I can’t let myself 
think about it. I’ve got to laugh, I’ve got to sing, I’ve got to 
draw pictures—or God knows what will become of me!” 

The tears were streaking her cheeks again, as she stood up, 
trembling in her misery. Wearily she threw back a tendril 
of her hair, askew over her ear. She slouched to the table 
and stood with one hand on a soiled dish, pausing there, as 
if waiting for strength to go on. 

The sight of her disarmed him. A wounding sense of 
shame betrayed him into pity. There was something infinitely 
pathetic in her attitude. The devil would have been filled 
with compassion for her. 

“Clara!” he cried impulsively. “Don’t cry!” 

She turned away from him, shaken with weeping. He 
strode around the table and seized her roughly in his arms. 


52 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


She nestled to him in a comfortable surrender. It was 
stiflingly warm in the dining room; they could smell the 
melted refuse of the ice-cream. 

That was the terrible way with them. Charley did not 
love her. He knew he did not love her; long ago, he had 
abandoned the pretense to himself. Yet always his pity made 
him a traitor to the truth. At the end of every quarrel he 
found refuge in a lie. And Clara yielded when he said such 
things; tended and nurtured as her heart clamored and cried 
to be, she was satisfied until the next time. 

His lies were as a drug to them; a deadly opiate which 
touched reality with a spiritual opium and made them an 
hour of forgetfulness. 

Life was sucking them dry. Over them it brooded, relent¬ 
less and implacable as this moist heat of midnight, which 
drained them even of the placid weariness which is the hand¬ 
maiden of sleep. On hot, wet pillows their two heads lay, 
open-eyed and listless. 

Side by side they were, in the quartered oak bed of their 
quartered oak bedroom furniture, in the dark of the front 
second-story room. A Carey Street car turned screakingly 
from Mosher Street into Carrollton Avenue, and groaned 
heavily on its journey downtown. It was after twelve 
o’clock; the wide-awake city was trying vainly to sleep through 
the hot, reluctant hours. 

The night was growing ever muggier, stickier. Clara was 
wet with stinging perspiration. Charley was feverish. Fiercely 
he had thrown aside all covering and lay, in his pajamas, 
sprawling under the canopy of the ceiling. 

To Clara this was an unspeakable vulgarism. In bed, 
respectable people should be covered up for the sake of 
modesty, no matter how hot it was, just as one should lock 
the door when one took a bath. She was lying under a light 
blanket. 

Charley’s eyes were wide open, staring into space as if his 


“I WONDER IF THERE IS A WAY OUT?” 53 


gaze were clairvoyant, reaching far out through the haze of 
the city, into the wild, cool quiet of the sea. Against the 
passionate blue and silver of the sky loomed the slender mast 
and spar of his dream ship, voyaging into unknown waters. 

He cursed softly, mutteringly, profanely. 

Clara, too, was looking into space, and her brain was busy 
with its own picturings. 

She was wondering if she had forgotten to lock the kitchen 
door. Had she turned off the gas safely? What would she 
buy for Sunday dinner when she went to market to-morrow 
afternoon? 

And to-morrow morning the insurance collector would call. 
His name was Mr. Harris. Mr. Harris was a good, Christian 
man. He lived in a furnished room on Pennsylvania Avenue. 
She had seen a hat of blue straw, trimmed with orange 
flowers, in a millinery window on Pennsylvania Avenue. 

She wished she could buy that hat. She wished Mr. Harris 
could see her in it. It was a pretty hat. But she couldn’t 
get it. Niggers had enough money to buy pretty hats of blue 
straw with orange flowers. She never had the money to buy 
anything for herself. 

That was the way life was, day in, day out. 

Accidentally, Charley’s bare foot touched against her toes, 
protruding audaciously from under her blanket. 

The contact had its own power; the subtle and amazing 
force of pity. That humble meeting of tired feet in the dark 
and the heat reawakened his compassion for her; made him 
wistfully concerned for her. Curiously, too, Clara felt a 
similar tenderness; an obscure mothering toward an incor¬ 
rigible child. 

In the same instant they turned toward each other. Charley 
put his arm under her neck. Her head slid nearer to him, 
lying at rest against his shoulder. 

Clasped together, they fell asleep. 


CHAPTER SIX 


DREAMS AND REALITIES 

Charley was incorrigible. 

There had been no doing anything with him from the day 
he could walk. 

They said of him that he took after his grandfather, who 
in the old days drove down three days a week from his farm 
in Carroll County, cursing at his mules, his covered wagon 
of flapping canvas loaded with butter and eggs and chickens. 
Three times a week the old man came to the Eagle Hotel on 
Franklin Street and drank himself into a blasphemous and 
uproarious intoxication. 

Charley did not drink, though Clara had once said there 
was no telling when he would take it into his head to begin. 
He took after his grandfather because he was a rebel; because 
he cursed things as they were and prayed for things as he 
would like them to be. 

From early infancy his mind had been full of such prayers. 
Nothing had ever quite pleased him; always he was cheated 
out of perfection. As he grew older, it retreated farther from 
the reach of his hands; the moon had seemed nearer to him 
in his high-chair than his lightest fancy now. 

He had never been satisfied with reality; he had always 
wished for something else, and seldom the wish came true. 
There was Fourth of July, before the days of safety and 
sanity, when the boys had real fire-crackers, and the holiday 
was one long detonation of explosions and flashes of bright 
fires. That hadn’t been enough for Charley. Always he had 

54 


DREAMS AND REALITIES 


55 


wanted to pile all his fireworks in one high mound, pour 
gasoline over the heap, and then toss a match into its very 
heart. 

And Christmas, too, had usually been a disappointment. 
There was a thrill in being lifted out of bed by his father, 
perched on his shoulder, and carried down the dark abyss 
of the back stairs, to the kitchen where his toys were spread. 
But each Christmas he had looked in vain among those toys 
for those he most ardently desired. 

There had never been given him the drawing set he craved, 
or the violin. 

His whole life had been a succession of experiences which 
he could not possibly share with any one else, because no one 
understood. They looked at him queerly when he spoke out 
his thoughts; after a while he learned reserve. But he had 
never got over asking embarrassing questions. 

There was the affair of the grocer across the street. Old 
Man Reid, the neighbors called him. Every morning, when 
the store was opened, Old Man Reid would carry out two 
huge barrels of sugar, and place them, like fat and ugly 
monoliths, at either side of the store door. Charley always 
wondered why he carried them out, and why, at nightfall, he 
carried them in again. They were so heavy, it was a marvel 
they did not break Old Man Reid’s spine. Yet day in, day out, 
he carried the barrels in and out. 

One day, Charley asked his mother why Old Man Reid 
did it. 

“Why don’t you ask a sensible question?” demanded old 
Mrs. Turner. “Ain’t you got sense enough to know that all 
grocery stores has sugar barrels at the door? Now shut up!” 

Life was filled with such puzzles. 

It was about that time his mother sent him to Sunday 
school. She told him that it was God’s house, and at once 
he wanted to know where God kept himself. Playing truant 


56 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


from the class-room, he hunted in all the church closets, and 
even under the pulpit. 

“This is God’s house,” he said to himself, “but where on 
earth is God?” 

He was punished severely for asking such a question, but 
he was not answered. 

His play-fellows bullied him, until he grew strong enough 
to bully them. They did not like him, because he did not 
like the things they liked. 

Their rough games bored him. His mind, from the first, 
dallied with objects and ideas which, to others, were un¬ 
noticed commonplaces. Near his home was a roofed arch, 
just in back of the fire house, which was called a hay-scales. 
The swung flooring was the scale balance, on to which the 
hay-wagons were driven. All day long, during the summer, 
huge drays, high-laden with grasses of withered gold, were 
hauled under the arch by snorting trains of sweating brown 
mules. This fascinated Charley, though he did not know 
why; there was a breath of adventure about the business. 
In the ears of memory he heard often in manhood the tinkle 
and the jangle of the mule bells, the clinking jingle of their 
harness, and the hoarse oaths of their sun-burned teamsters. 

All through his youth and childhood he was forever 
stumbling upon inexplicable moments of transport. When, 
for the first time, on a hand-organ, he heard the strains of the 
Miserere , he reeled like a drunkard, ready to swoon at such 
dazing sweetness of sound. It was an appalling stroke upon 
his imagination and his senses comparable to nothing less 
than a first sexual experience. 

Even to the moment that he fell asleep with Clara’s head on 
his shoulder, Charley was certain that he could be perfectly 
happy in life, had he only the art to paint beautiful pictures, 
or a violin and the skill to play it. Form and color thrilled 


DREAMS AND REALITIES 


57 


him. The sound of the violin put upon him a delirious ecstasy. 
To place its head lovingly against his cheek and caress its 
strings with the potent bow was an enchanted hope of his, 
persisting in spite of everything. 

All that he could do was to draw crayon pictures on the 
wall, sketches on scraps of paper, and to hum; Clara called 
him a humming bird and laughed shrilly at her own jest— 
and then blasphemed his disfiguration of the plaster. 

He wanted music. Early in his married life he had brought 
home a canary, in a gilded cage, wishing that it would sing 
for them. But Clara soon over-fed it, and it died. 

His curious dissatisfaction with what contented every one 
else was never more virulent than in his hatred of the bay and 
his yearning for the sea. 

During the summer, the principal relaxation of the people 
was to go on a boat excursion down to Tolchester, or some 
less popular of the bay resorts. Charley looked upon such 
outings with contempt. Except for a glimpse of the mild 
green breast of Fort McHenry on the downward trip, and 
the scarlet play of the furnaces at Steelton against the night 
skies, he was indifferent. About such trips there was, even 
in his early boyhood, a definite sense of being cheated. One 
was never out of sight of land. It was all finite; bordered 
neatly with a yellow shore line, fringed with the green tops 
of tame trees. 

What he desired was green water, boundless, high and 
heaving, stretching away infinitely. 

In every aspect of life he found such flaws; it had been 
always so with him. Very distinctly he recalled his childish 
emotions during a snow-storm. Here, again, his artistic im¬ 
pulses were violated by the careless hand of reality. For 
hours he would sit, when a little boy, at the front parlor 
window, watching the drifting white flakes, scurrying past 
him in silent laughter. The bulging gray cobblestones with 


58 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


which the streets were paved softened under their quiet 
caresses and became an expanse of pure and white perfection. 
The sight lifted his childish soul. Then, rumbling down the 
highway a laundry wagon would come, stuffed with dirty 
linen, and its yellow wheels would gash black trails across 
the snow. He cried out in kicking, screaming rage against the 
sacrilege. 

His mother had spanked him and called him a little fool. 

She was always telling him that, when he was growing up. 
She did not understand when he ran away from the front 
doorstep, where she had put him out to play; she boxed his 
ears. The wharves were miles from his house, yet he would 
tramp through blistering sunny streets, hours going, hours 
returning, for a few moments’ glimpse of the long docks, gray 
and white. There was something appalling and beautiful in 
the noisy riot of Pratt and Light Streets; hints of other and 
distant worlds in the ocean liners moored in the long, wet 
caverns of the docks; the coast-wise vessels with red and 
black hulls, the white steamers of the bay, stout and pompous 
and important, and the orange spars of the sailing ships, with 
their furled sails and mysterious coils of ropes. Even the 
fruits and vegetables seemed strange, cargoed in these 
trembling craft; not like the fruits and vegetables in the 
familiar market stalls. Red, ripe tomatoes; berries, black 
and blue and red; golden peaches and juicy green pears; 
green watermelons and yellow cantaloupes; silver mounds of 
shad and perch and rock; all the luscious commerce of the 
Chesapeake and the Eastern shore were there, a richer feast 
for Charley’s eyes than they would ever be to any one’s 
stomach. 

No one ever understood him when he spoke of the charm 
these things had for him. They eyed him queerly and spoke 
afterward, behind their hands, in worried whispers. When 
fire had destroyed the business section of the city, he had 
laughed with a hearty and unthinking pleasure, crying out 


DREAMS AND REALITIES 


59 


at the crimson glory of the skies. For that he had been 
whipped. The fire was a tragedy; it turned one hundred and 
forty acres of business property, eighty-six blocks of store 
and office buildings, into black cinders, stinking smoke, and 
broken hearts. Was that anything to cry gladly about? 

After that, his mother had gone patiently to the task of 
teaching him right from wrong; of discriminating between 
the ugly and the beautiful. God was beautiful; church was 
beautiful; the face of the minister was beautiful with the 
peace of paradise upon it. Charley frankly admitted that the 
preacher’s face looked sour. 

He and his world were opposed. 

His mother tried to teach him Baptist hymns, but he pre¬ 
ferred the yodels of black men, swathed around the belly with 
white aprons, swinging in either hand a glistening nickel 
bucket filled with oysters. In the barbaric lilt of those 
oystermen’s tunes, Charley found a thrill and his soul tingled 
in subtle concord. 

This tendency to find a kinship with the darkies frightened 
his parents and their relatives. Charley liked to play with 
little nigger boys and girls; he watched their elders with sly 
interest. They had the touch of the jungle upon them; some¬ 
where he had been told that their grandfathers had lived in 
Africa. Mentally he stripped them of their ragged garments. 
He re-clothed them imaginatively, with a belly-band of straw. 
Towering spears, tipped with a deadly poison, he put in their 
brown hands. With armlets and anklets of wild beasts’ teeth 
he touched them off; he set bone rings dangling from their 
flat noses and awkward ears; to his eyes they became won¬ 
derful and terrifying cannibals. 

As he grew older, he developed two fierce passions—the 
theater and the library. 

He read prodigiously. 

The Enoch Pratt Free Library became his real home. Within 


60 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


its quiet shelter, he sat at the round, red tables, exploring the 
whole vast world of books, from the Philobiblion of Richard 
de Bury, through Lord Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion, 
up to Kipling, Swinburne and Barrie, an odd jumble that he 
loved especially well. 

This extraordinary friendship with literature came about 
as the result of an accident. A book fell into his hands one 
day; he picked it up in the park; an outline of the best 
writings in all languages. As he read it through, a thirst to 
know every one of the thousands of books outlined in it 
possessed him. He set out to read them all. The result was 
that though he left school in the seventh grade, he obtained a 
sound education. 

Those who did not disparage his studies, laughed at him 
tolerantly. Few praised his intellectual industry. They 
recommended that he learn a trade. They pointed out to him 
that only failures and people with nothing else to do spent 
their time in the library. 

Their contempt for the library irritated him almost to fury. 
Frequently he cursed the poverty of the building in which* 
literary treasures were housed. Even as a very young boy he 
recognized the inequality of the library building and other 
civic structures. The office buildings were splendid temples, 
and the men who used them wore expensive clothes. But the 
library was seedy and patched, like many of the readers who 
sat with him at the round, red tables. 

“I don’t understand it,” he said one day. “The Court 
House, where people are sent to prison, is like the palace of 
a king. The Penitentiary is like a castle in a fairy story. The 
Fifth Regiment Armory, where men are trained to murder, is 
the finest building in town. But look at the library!” 

People seldom did look at it. It was a modest and apolo¬ 
getic little building, on Mulberry Street, in the shadow of the 
Catholic Cathedral. 

When Charley would speak of the glories he found in the 


DREAMS AND REALITIES 


61 


library, people invariably spoke scornfully of Enoch Pratt, 
the old millionaire who had bequeathed it to the city. They 
called him a miser. They related how he would walk through 
the streets, looking for stray nails in the gutters. They said he 
sold the nails to rag and bone shops. 

“What does that matter?” Charley would angrily protest. 
“The books are there!” 

He wondered if the overseers had forgotten the library. 
The names of men he heard mentioned with deep respect 
occurred to him; were they responsible for spending all the 
money on armories, court houses and jails? What did Frank 
Brown, Edwin Warfield, John Walter Smith, E. Clay Timanus, 
J. Barry Mahool, Thomas G. Hayes, little Alcaeus Hooper— 
the long list of mayors and councilmen and governors and 
politicians—what did they think about it? 

Often, on his way home from the library, Charley passed 
the prim and shriveled little figure of Cardinal Gibbons, 
sedately about his afternoon walk down Charles Street. His 
red cap showed under his silk hat, as he crept along under 
the bowing and reverent trees. 

People said the cardinal owned the town. The Catholics 
said it with pride; the Methodists and the Baptists said it 
vengefully. 

But Charley’s only thought was one of wonder. If the 
little old man did own the town, why didn’t he order a better 
building for the library? 

As warm as his passion for his books was his love of the 
theater. 

To get inside a theater, he would make any sacrifice, work 
any length of time, and at the most uncongenial labor. Run¬ 
ning errands, minding babies, washing windows, doing work 
that he loathed and despised, he managed to get enough 
money to go to the theater once or twice a week, from the 
time he was fourteen years old. 


62 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


He had to take the cheapest seats, but he went to the 
choicest performances. 

Opera and concerts and drama were his favorite, but now 
and then he took in a vaudeville show, and more rarely went 
to a burlesque at the Gayety, or the old theater across the 
bridge, which was called the Monumental. When the Aborns 
brought opera in English to Ford’s, he was always in the front 
row in the pit, once or twice a week. There he learned their 
repertoire by heart; he wept over Mabel Garrison’s singing of 
Cara Nome , years before the Metropolitan Grand Opera Com¬ 
pany knew there was such a voice in the world as that of 
Mabel Garrison. 

Whenever Mr. Bernard Ulrich announced an opera at the 
Lyric—which in his childhood had been known as the Music 
Hall—Charley was there to hear. Yet his tastes were encour¬ 
agingly catholic. He could become excited over a Blaney 
melodrama at Holliday Street, and still remember that on its 
holy stage had played the stalwart heroes of a mighty past. 

He liked such diverse entertainments as William S. Hart in 
one of the early Triangle pictures, called “The Disciple,” at 
the Auditorium; Maude Adams in “Chanticleer” at the new 
Academy of Music, and “The Sign of the Cross” at Ford’s 
Grand Opera House. 

The net sum of such a childhood and adolescence was a 
most complex and extraordinary personality. 

While he was still too young to understand that he was an 
alien and enemy to the life and people around him, he had 
met Clara. Her physical charms had bereft him of his young 
judgment. He married her. 

The realization of his difference from those people that he 
knew came later, after he was married. And then it was too 
late. 

Just as Charley began to love and understand his dreams, 
the last links in the binding chain of realities were forged 


DREAMS AND REALITIES 


63 


upon his soul. He was a prisoner to reality; he who had 
wings. Clara was a distinct reality. His job in the Atlass 
Brush Factory was a reality. All his money, all his mind, all 
his heart, all his time, were mortgaged to the service of these 
realities. 

They jarred him as the metallic screak of a car-wheel turn¬ 
ing in an ungreased switch, or the oily smell of peanuts 
chewed by a negress. The blood was being crushed out of 
his heart, slowly. 

He rebelled, but only verbally. 

It was a singular fact that he could not find it in himself 
to break his fetters and escape. With his own hands he had 
chained himself; his moral scruples kept him secure from 
freedom. He believed sincerely that Clara loved him; he 
pitied her devoutly; he believed that her heart would break, 
if he parted from her; he saw no way out. 

He submitted. 

If there were another woman in his life, he meant that she 
should not know of it. He would deceive her, but meanwhile 
he would not betray her. Sometimes he believed it was 
because he did not have the courage to separate. But that 
was not true. In his clearer thinking, he knew it was not 
true. He was not a coward. If he had known that Clara 
could get along without him, he would have gone. 

But he was utterly assured that Clara loved him, and life 
held no bitterer mockery than that. In occasional moments 
of unashamed honesty, he admitted to himself the truth—it 
was not marriage, nor any of the conventions which chained 
his feet, but his compassion for the stupid woman he had 
married. 

In such self-facings he knew this to be his weakness; a 
weakness spiritually so disreputable that he could not respect 
his own soul. Already it was about the subtle work of eating 
away at his vitals. 

He knew that, and knowing it, lacked the strength to crush 


64 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


his pity, not fully aware that such a tenderness is inevitably 
a wholly fiendish cruelty. 

Trying not to be bitter, he wore a jesting mask, japing and 
wounding those he pitied, staying on when it would have been 
better to run away; losing himself in fancies when there were 
fancies in which to be lost. 

The odd and grotesque fancies that he cherished! 

To be a burnoosed brigand, astride a galloping black stal¬ 
lion, racing across a desert of sanded gold! Idly to linger on 
the hem of a motley circle, squatting around an Algerian 
marabout, performing mystic thaumaturgy in the scarlet 
market place of the Moulay Idriss! To bargain with an art 
dealer in Venice, haggling over a tryptich, on the colored 
wings of which might be serious little angels playing on a 
psaltery! To bow the knee in a curving train of pilgrims 
of the Hadj, when the howling muezzin from a glittering 
minaret bellowed out the call to prayer. 

But he must move on; men called upon him to wake up, 
and, pitying them, he rubbed his eyes and stared blearly at 
them and their realities. 

More rarely he thirsted for a sleep so profound that it could 
have no awakening. Quietly and unafraid to glide into a 
Nirvana of unyielding calm; a slumber so serene that in it he 
would find a surcease from the torturing lure of his evasive 
dreams. 


CHAPTER SEVEN 


ANOTHER WOMAN AWAKE 

There was another woman, wakeful beneath the warm breath 
of the July night; wakeful because of a sadness that lay upon 
her like a malediction. 

At her open window she stood, the gold of her hair 
touched with a platinum band of moonlight. Beneath her 
lay a mild landscape, patterned after an English park; the 
lawn woven into phantomesque designs of tremulous shadow; 
the air humming with the whizzing drone of insects. Toward 
the east a white tower was lifted against the intense night 
blue; the ghostly dome of Homewood. 

“How beautiful!” she murmured. “And how sad!” 

Constance Lane had been charmed and saddened with the 
beauty lingering wistfully about this queer old-young city. 
She did not belong to the town. In no sense was she typical 
of it, yet coming into it as a stranger, she had found it a 
good and beautiful place. 

Perhaps it was because she had found love, playing hide 
and seek among the trees of Mount Vernon Place, that she 
thought it beautiful and sad. 

Of a surety she had found love, and with it a haunting 
and remote melancholy. Some one had told Constance long 
ago that love was an eternal elusion; she did not understand 
it then and she did not understand it now, but she felt it to 
be true. 

Constance was a Boston girl, who did not wear horn-rimmed 
glasses or read the Atlantic Monthly. Her people had been 
well off; Constance was born in a sober-windowed, red- 

65 


66 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


bricked house on Commonwealth Avenue, and had been edu¬ 
cated in a correct school. As she grew older, she had gone 
to a finishing academy for young ladies; she had taken her 
preliminary tour of Europe, and had made her girlish bow 
to society under the most exquisite auspices. 

On her twentieth birthday, she was an orphan, with an 
income of less than five thousand dollars a year; all that 
remained of her father’s substantial business. That had been 
two years before. In the interval, she had resisted the advice 
of maiden aunts and many friends to entrap a male with 
money and reclaim her place in society; she had discouraged 
the wooing of one or two of her old admirers, and had found 
herself well contented in a business for which she had shown 
an admirable adaptitude—interior decorating. 

This business had prospered, so that altogether, Constance 
had an income of a bit better than fifteen thousand a year. 
In the preceding spring, she had been especially rushed on 
the North Shore, and when her two maiden aunts in Guilford 
had invited her to spend the latter part of April with them, 
she had accepted with some enthusiasm. 

This visit was being long-drawn out. Whereas Constance 
had meant to be somewhere on the Massachusetts coast early 
in June, this July night found her still with her aunts. But 
now she was ready to leave them; she could not remain beyond 
the Sunday that was so near. 

Love had coaxed her to linger; love born of an adventure 
with a red-haired young man in the concert hall of the Pea¬ 
body Conservatory of Music. Frequently she and the red- 
haired young man met clandestinely in a precious and most 
delicious intimacy. 

“Charley!” murmured Constance, confiding in the moon¬ 
light. “Bonnie Prince Charley!” 

Charley had no right to attend those Friday afternoon 
recitals at the Peabody. He couldn’t afford it. He squan¬ 
dered money which Clara needed for clothes, and he had 


ANOTHER WOMAN AWAKE 


67 


painful arguments with Mr. Strieker about leaving early on 
Friday afternoons, but he always managed to be there at four 
o’clock through the long and hallowed procession of great 
musicians who made up the season; Harold Bauer, Alma 
Gluck, the Flonzaley Quartet, and the others. 

On that perfumed afternoon in April, Constance came and 
took the vacant chair beside him. Her face brought instantly 
a mist into his eyes and unimagined music into his heart. 
Though her face was not beautiful in a conventional sense, it 
touched him as the truant echo of a forgotten melody. Con¬ 
stance, looking into the clear and earnest eyes of this red- 
haired boy, saw something shining there that she loved with¬ 
out parley. From the first glance they were attracted; they 
chatted during the intermissions; they introduced themselves 
shamelessly, and then Charley had said: “Will you come 
out into the country with me tomorrow—please?” 

There was a note in his voice that thrilled her. It was not 
like her to accept such an astonishing and daring invitation. 
But she had seen the honest pleading in his eyes, and there 
was, too, a masterful overtone in his voice. 

Until that afternoon Charley had been a mental swag¬ 
gerer in the courts of Venus. He judged love by his own 
marriage, which is a mistaken attitude in any man. Yearning 
for an ideal woman, he nevertheless had thumbed his nose at 
his own desire. Aphrodite was dead, he told himself. There 
was no woman left in the world worthy of the love he had 
to give—he felt sure of that. 

Next day they stole off together over the hills of Mount 
Washington, and on the slopes and in the valleys their young 
hearts were tangled in the white meshes of the dogwood. 

Curiously, in all the rainbow haze of the weeks that fol¬ 
lowed, they had left their love without a voice. 

Charley had told her frankly who and what he was. He 
had not whined about his marriage. It was enough that he 
told her he was unhappy. Constance did not ply him with 
questions. There was a richer understanding in their silence. 


68 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


Their lips had never touched; only infrequently did they 
dare clasp hands, for the dear pressure lighted a flame within 
them all too consuming and terrible. 

They had no plans, or even hopes; nothing but their hours 
together. But such hours they were! 

Their long talks—about everything! Especially he was 
happy when she would tell him of places she had seen—the 
Riviera, Paris and Cairo. Even Boston became a story as 
she described it to him. 

Afterward he would curse the city in which he had been 
born, and out of which he had never traveled. 

“This wide-awake city!” he would exclaim derisively. 
“The city of wide-awake slaves!” 

They disagreed about this, probably because they looked 
at the city from wholly different viewpoints. 

Constance found it charming. The atmosphere of a stately 
past hovered over it like a fragrance. She loved the old things 
about the town, the white ornate doorways crumbling on 
Colonial houses, the ancient trees and expansive homes which 
retained their dignity in spite of the blacks who were now 
their tenants. She found a delight in the green slopes of old 
thoroughfares—George Street, Mulberry Street and others like 
them. 

Now and then she reminded him that there was a different 
life in the city, the life of the well-to-do classes, to which he 
was a stranger. 

Charley was definitely of the middle class. He had never 
contacted with the gracious atmosphere of Guilford, or of 
Mount Vernon Place, where the gray shaft to Washington 
stands like a sentinel forever guarding formal social recti¬ 
tude. Through her aunts Constance had met many of the 
town’s best people. Here she and Charley came to a dis¬ 
agreement sometimes almost violent. Charley had a vague 
kind of socialism in him, but Constance insisted it was only 
envy. To rebuke him, she would remind him of some of the 


ANOTHER WOMAN AWAKE 


69 


great dreamers who had lived where he had lived—Poe, and 
Lanier, and Father Tabb. Mention of these was always sure 
to capture his enthusiasm. 

“Father Tabb!” he would exclaim; “some day the world 
will know the old blind priest!” 

And then he would clasp his hands and murmur some lines 
that Tabb had written, most often his Invocation. 

“How,” Constance asked him one day, “can you dislike a 
city which has nourished and suckled such men?” 

“Because it has reared them only to kill them,” he would 
reply hotly. “Haven’t you been here long enough to know 
that this is a ‘wide-awake’ town—that its cry is a very macabre 
to the dead to wake up? It is a lovely place to dream in, but 
it is against the law to dream!” 

“Then,” asked Constance, “you have no love of home?” 

“I have no love of this town,” protested Charley. “I mean 
I have the feeling that I have never been home. I am here, 
and yet, oh, I don’t know how to explain it! I am homesick 
all the time!” 

“It is hard to understand,” confessed Constance. 

“I think it is the people. Or no—not the people either. 
The people are all right. It is the overseers, the people who 
are telling you all the time to wake up, wake up, wake up! 
There is no leadership in beauty. I believe that the people 
in this city have a love of beauty, but it is cold, strangled. 
The dream is taken out of their hearts and only the husk 
remains. Beauty is everything to me, Constance, everything 
in the world! And yet, beautiful things make me sad—even 
the gayest of Chopin’s music, even the dearest rose on the 
hush, even the most calm sea. I wonder if it is because 
beauty is so fragile and so fleeting; the one irreparable thing 
in the world. Who can mend a broken flower? I tell you, 
Constance, they are blind to beauty here. Sometimes I hear 
a strain of music, or I see the sun glints on a slender cross 
at twilight, and I ask myself, ‘Why is it? Where is the jus- 


70 BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

tice, that I can see this beauty and my brother is eating 
dust?’ ” 

Constance leaned forward and touched him quietly. 

“Perhaps your brother knows a beauty to which you are 
blind,” she said. 

He laughed. 

“How is that possible? How can it be possible? Do you 
imagine there is a beauty in ‘Strickly Strieker’s’ brushes— 
every hair of which is numbered?” 

“I don’t know. There should be a beauty and a dream 
everywhere. Only it seems to me that somehow you and Mr. 
Strieker will some day have to understand each other. I 
think you are wrong to scorn him as you do. Some day you 
may find something in Mr. Strieker, yes, and even his brushes, 
to which your soul will pay obeisance!” 

With an arrogant shake of his head, Charley hummed a 
wild strain from Caesar Cui. 

“There! The song answers for me. Music is our form of 
confession!” he cried. “Do you see, Constance, that all this 
love of beauty in me has been crystallized in you? I was 
sick for you before you came. I did not know who you were 
nor where you were, and then, I found you. I don’t know 
what brought us together—how or why. I only know that I 
did find you.” 

“We found each other!” she interrupted tensely. “But you 
must not say these things, Charley. Let us live in the present. 
This is Arcady, where no one thinks of yesterday or to¬ 
morrow.” 

He flushed guiltily, and said no more. 

The memory of the exquisite afternoon came back to her 
poignantly this night as she remained in the moonlit window. 

To-morrow she would have to tell him she was going home. 
She was in love with him, but he was married, poor and 
middle class. 

What would they do with their last afternoon? 


CHAPTER EIGHT 


CLARA HAS A VISITOR 

At breakfast, on the morning following the visit of their 
relatives, Clara was morose and unkempt; Charley was cheer¬ 
fully quiet. He ate his breakfast with apparent contentment; 
he had never told Clara with what disfavor he regarded her 
unimaginative meals. 

It was one of Charley’s minor dreams to eat some day at 
a dainty table, with the napery and silver of luxury at his 
hand. Not having them, he accepted his unvarying two 
boiled eggs, served in a cracked coffee cup, bread and butter, 
currant buns and coffee. 

But then, Charley’s notions on food were as flighty as the 
rest of him. There were some foods which Clara greatly 
enjoyed, the sight of which set fire to his wrath. He detested 
bologna, cold ham, and compressed beef. The steamy odor 
of cabbage, for which Clara had an especial fondness, put 
him in a rage. Turnips and sprouts and pale yellowish- 
green squashes reminded him of virginal old maids in search 
of a sympathetic psycho-analyst. 

It was his solemn contention that any person who ate onions 
or cheese was possessed of an ingenital criminal mind. This 
Clara regarded as another of Charley’s daily insults; she 
regarded it as a direct criticism of her father. Mr. Stricken 
liked onion sandwiches and ate his cheese with a spoon. 

Charley was humming as he entered the offices of the Atlass 
Brush Company the next morning. 

71 


72 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


The factory in the rear was already humming and roaring; 
simple and compound brushes were in the throes of birth; 
bristles, hair and fiber were in the very air one breathed; 
veneer and wire and varnish, wood and tools and grime; 
noise and hard work. 

Everything in the place was strictly Strieker. 

The crash and clatter of the plant drowned the humming 
of Charley as he came to his desk. He was loosening a 
rubber band from a packet of unchecked bills, when a hand 
was laid on his shoulder. 

Henry Strieker, his brother-in-law, was squinting at him 
amiably. 

“Good morning, Charley,” he said. “Had a great time up 
your house last night. Say! You know what I’m thinking? 
You ought to take more exercise. That’s what’s the matter 
with you. Say! I’m going up to the Y. M. C. A. Building 
on Franklin Street this afternoon and work out. Why don’t 
you come along —as my guest?" 

“Sorry!” 

Charley smiled, most inexplicably. His blue eyes were 
fixed candidly on his brother-in-law, and for no apparent 
reason at all, Henry flushed. 

“I’ve got a date!” explained Charley, snapping the rubber 
band. “But I appreciate your invitation, Henry. Thank 
you.” 

His unwavering gaze seemed greatly to disconcert the 
young heir to the house of Strieker. 

“Well—I’m sorry, too,” he stammered. “But still you 
know what pop always says. What can’t be helped, can’t be 
helped, you know!” 

“Yes, I know,” smiled Charley. “That’s an original!” 

Henry went back to his own desk, in his own private office, 
feeling vaguely discomfited. In fact, he felt almost un- 


CLARA HAS A VISITOR 73 

masked; there was an odd discernment in that open gaze of 
Charley Turner’s eyes. 

Had he heard anything? 

“I wonder if that guy’s wise?” was the manner of self¬ 
interrogation which young Henry employed. 

For there had been a cunning design in his invitation to 
Charley; a scheme hatched in secret conclave with his father, 
only a few moments before. 

Mr. Strieker had come to work, wearing a smile of unctuous 
arrogance, which, to an observing eye, betokened a focussed 
purpose in Mr. Strieker’s brain. His courtly manner, as he 
bowed to his stenographer, could be interpreted on the same 
basis. It was the revelation of an intellect which was about 
to function as only it knew how to function. 

Before calling in his son, however, Mr. Strieker perused 
his mail. As a typical citizen, active in public affairs, and 
not wholly devoid of political aspirations, Mr. Strieker re¬ 
ceived a heavy mail, not all of which concerned the brush 
business. On this morning he found waiting for him letters 
from the East Baltimore Business Men’s Association, Thalia 
Society, the T. 0. V. Pleasure Association, the Maryland 
Oyster Association, the Maryland State Horticultural Society, 
the Baltimore County Teachers’ Association, and the Woman’s 
Christian Temperance Union. 

Most of these were printed or mimeographed circulars, but 
Mr. Strieker read them faithfully and with the most attentive 
seriousness. Three of them he put aside for reply. 

Then he summoned Henry. 

“Henry,” said Mr. Strieker, when the door of the office was 
closed upon them, “I want to talk with you about my son-in- 
law. You didn’t know all that was going on behind the 
scenes at your sister Clara’s last night. Well, now, I’m going 
to enlighten you. I believe Charley Turner is running around 
with a woman!” 


74 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


“Gee, pop!” 

“I know the signs. I know what it means when a man acts 
like Charley has been acting. Either he’s crazy or in love, 
and there ain’t much difference. Every Saturday afternoon 
he goes somewhere and nobody knows where. That’s where 
you come in. I want you to find out!” 

“Gee, pop!” 

“That’s what I want you to do. First go out there and try 
to get him to go somewhere with you this afternoon. If he 
says he has another date, then make your plans accordingly. 
Follow him. I don’t care what it costs. I’ll go to any ex¬ 
pense; I’ll spend five dollars if necessary to find out what 
that fellow does on Saturday afternoon. But be sure you 
dcfn’t let him see you following. If he gets on a street car, 
you follow in a taxicab. I want results, Henry, and I’m 
depending on you!” 

“All right, pop!” 

There had been an amused and an accusing glint in Char¬ 
ley’s eyes when Henry invited him to the Y. M. C. A. 

It worried Henry for the rest of the morning. 

With more than usual haste that morning, Clara hurried 
through the washing of the front steps. 

Back in the kitchen, she rushed through the cleaning of 
the breakfast dishes. An almost holy impatience actuated her 
in the sweeping and dusting, and in the making of the bed. 
Then she did up her hair, and otherwise composed her ap¬ 
pearance, even to the extent of changing her gingham apron 
to one of starched white muslin. 

Hardly were these preparations completed when there came 
a gentle ring at the door-bell. 

It was Mr. Harris, the insurance agent. 

Mr. Harris was a tall, thin man, bulging in the nose and 
cheek bones; with bushy eyebrows threatening his inoffensive 
eyes, and a deep voice. His people came from Harford 


75 


CLARA HAS A VISITOR 

County. He was a member of New Baptist Church, and sang 
bass in the choir, though there were some in the congregation 
who thought he sang too loud. His one zeal in life was 
religion; the insurance business was only a means to an end. 
There were times when he found religion an excellent talking 
point in selling a policy; there were times again when selling 
a policy opened the door to conversion to the Baptist faith. 
He felt he had solved the problem of living as God wanted 
him to live. 

“Good morning!” boomed Mr. Harris in his profoundest 
bass, as Clara opened the door. 

Clara’s smile was that of one who is meeting a partner in 
a great cause. 

“Good morning, Mr. Harris. Nice morning, ain’t it? But 
a little warm. Wasn’t last night awful? I just thought I 
would die. Come right in, Mr. Harris.” 

She led him through the cool shadows of the hallway into 
the dining room, where Mr. Harris sat down audibly in the 
rocking chair with the amputated arm. He produced a large 
handkerchief and wiped his face with it gratefully. When 
he put it back in his pocket, Clara was smiling as she stood 
before him with a glass of ice water in her extended hand. 

Mr. Harris accepted the water with a glance eloquent of 
his appreciation. He drank it all in noisy gulps. 

“I think I owe you fifty cents this week,” said Clara, with 
a little self-conscious simper. 

“Let’s see,” temporized Mr. Harris. 

From his side coat pocket he exhumed a book, bound in 
damp imitation leather. With a red and hairy forefinger he 
followed his penciled notations, and clucked a calculation on 
his tongue. 

“Fifty cents. That’s correct!” he announced. 

Clara handed him the silver coin and the little gray book¬ 
lets in which receipts for the insurance money were recorded. 


76 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


There was a serious silence while he made the entries. Then 
he passed them back. 

“I guess you’re pretty tired,” remarked Clara. 

“It’s pretty hot going,” admitted Mr. Harris. “But a man 
must do his work. You don’t look tired. You always look 
happy, Mrs. Turner.” 

“It’s nice of you to say that,” said Clara, flushing. “I 
know you don’t mean it. I know what I look like. Just an 
old rag!” 

“Nothing about it! Nothing about it!” protested Mr. 
Harris. “Did you ever stop to figure how many women I 
see in a day, Mrs. Turner? Never less than fifty. Never 
less than fifty. I know women. And a good Christian never 
even lies to please a friend, Mrs. Turner. No ma’am. You’re 
like the Rose of Sharon!” 

“Oh, Mr. Harris!” giggled Clara. “You can’t mean that.” 

“I do!” reiterated Mr. Harris emphatically. Then, as if 
to reestablish a firm understanding of the moralities, he 
added: “How is Mr. Turner?” 

“Just the same,” replied Clara, downcast at once. “I can’t 
do anything with him!” 

“Don’t give up hope,” advised Mr. Harris. “Something 
will bring that boy back to God. It may be a scourge. He 
may have to suffer. God punishes those He loves. But some 
day your husband will be saved, ma’am!” 

“God grant it!” said Clara fervently. 

“There’s going to be two baptisms down at Brantly to¬ 
morrow night,” boasted Mr. Harris. “Why couldn’t you get 
him to come down there with you? It might turn his heart 
from sin just to see it!” 

“I wish he would, but you couldn’t make him go. He’d 
only sneer at it. Calls it indecent public bathing. My, 
Doctor Wharton is a grand preacher, ain’t he? Was you 
down to the praying band last Sunday afternoon? You 
wasn’t? Oh, you ought to have been there. My, they had a 


CLARA HAS A VISITOR 


77 


grand time. One little girl only ten years old was converted. 
She sang a solo all by herself; ‘Jesus Will Cleanse My Sinful 
Heart 9 was the hymn, and there was people crying all over 
the place!” 

“I certainly am sorry I missed it,” announced Mr. Harris. 

“Oh, you would have had a grand time. We’re going to 
have a new organist—Miss Healy’s sick, you know—and 
there’s a saved Jew going to speak to-morrow, and a woman 
whose husband died a Catholic is going to tell what she knows 
about the priests!” 

“I certainly will be there!” decided Mr. Harris. 

They talked for an hour. Clara always found Mr. Harris 
an especially agreeable companion. They were never bored 
with each other. He regarded her with awe; privately he told 
himself it was lucky for Charley Turner he met her first. 
She was the most sensible little woman he had ever met—and 
look at the many he had met! 


CHAPTER NINE 


“we should never have taken that kiss” 

Constance was waiting for Charley, a little after one o’clock 
that Saturday afternoon, in one of the loveliest and most 
remote recesses of Druid Hill Park. 

One end of the park juts out over the grave of an aban¬ 
doned toll-gate, where a forking of the road sends the 
Reisterstown Turnpike and Park Heights Avenue forward in 
diverging angles. Here the park drops suddenly into a cool, 
protected valley, through which green water rambles over 
gray stones. It is a winsome and secluded spot, sheltered 
from the world, and on this July afternoon the green leaves 
were playing with the elfin sunlight, while the old winds 
murmured pleasantly through young and trusting trees. 

Constance seemed a real part of the vernal background, 
one of a company of invisible dryads who had come out of 
the woodland to rest on a bench. Her simple frock of nile 
green organdy added a reality to the illusion that she was a 
part of two worlds; the trembling of her yellow hair in the 
breeze was as if some romping spirit had touched her play¬ 
fully as he passed. 

Her blue eyes, clear and calmly expectant, were watching 
the turn in the road where presently Charley would appear. 
There was a gracious pleasure in her expectancy; Charley had 
said of her once that her face had all the serene candor of a 
Raphael Madonna. 

He was waving boyishly as he ran toward her. 

78 


“WE SHOULD NOT HAVE TAKEN THAT KISS” 79 


“Close your eyes!” he cried, as he reached her side. “I’ve 
got a surprise for you!” 

“Must I open my mouth, too?” 

“No! Just shut your eyes—and, oh, yes! Open your 
ears!” 

Constance placed her hands over her eyes. 

“If you keep me waiting. I’m going to peep,” she threatened. 

Suddenly a most extraordinary sound assailed the quiet of 
the sheltered glade. It was a high-shrilled, piping wail, 
making an earnest pretense to the melody of The Song of 
India. 

“Gracious!” exclaimed Constance. “What can that be?” 

She drew her hands away and looked in mock astonish¬ 
ment. Charley was gravely spinning a round, gilded object 
on his thumb. 

“It’s a wooden potato, and no more, according to certain 
of my critics!” he announced. “But that is a prejudiced 
misnomer. It is, in fact, a musical instrument!” 

Laughing, she took the toy from him and put it to her own 
lips. A queer little note came out of it, but that was all. 

With a sudden and bewildering leap, his manner altered 
from casual playfulness to one of eager earnestness. 

“Let me have it back—just for a moment,” he murmured. 

As she returned it to him, he pressed it quickly to his lips 
and blew a note. It was a low and tender sound, very poig¬ 
nant and sweet. 

“That was beautiful!” she murmured. “It sounded like 
the happy call of a bird!” 

“Constance,” he said softly, “this funny little toy touched 
your lips and then touched mine. Why shouldn’t it sing 
with joy?” 

Henry Strieker had left the offices of the Atlass Brush Com¬ 
pany with five dollars expense money in his pocket. This 
sum was now reduced to fifty cents. The taxi fare from the 


80 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


factory out to the far reach of Druid Hill Park, where Char¬ 
ley had led him, had amounted to four dollars and fifty cents. 

But Henry was not alarmed. His father would not com¬ 
plain. Already he had the evidence. Cautiously peering over 
the rustic fence, down into the green glade into which Charley 
had hurried, Henry had been witness to the little comedy of 
the ocarino. 

“Gee! She’s a peach, too,” was his comment. “Well! 
What’ll pop have to say about this? . . . Wonder what 
they’re talking about? Some dirt, I’ll bet!” 

Possessed of a wholly natural curiosity in this regard, 
Henry made a wide detour. He scrambled down a grassy 
hillside, unobserved, and then, dropping to his knees, he 
crawled like a red Indian, silently, intently, among the prickly 
bushes, until he was concealed only a few feet from the bench 
on which sat Constance and Charley. 

Even their murmurs and whispers were audible to him. 
He was chuckling at his own cleverness. Then a hand seized 
his collar, and he was jerked violently to his feet. 

“What do you think you’re doing here?” snarled the voice 
of a man. He was uniformed in gray, with a military helmet, 
and on his breast was a glittering badge. 

“I ain’t doing anything,” panted Henry. “I was just look¬ 
ing for a pencil I lost!” 

“Tell it to the judge!” jeered the park policeman. 

Deaf to the whining protestations of the pallid young man, 
the park officer clutched his prisoner by the sleeve and led 
him away. 

“Where are you taking me?” cried Henry in a panic. 

“You’re going to get a free ride in the wagon,” promised 
the policeman. “All the way to the Jefferson Police Station!” 

In the trees behind them, Charley and Constance heard the 
argument, and turned to look. They did not see the police¬ 
man or his captive. As the voices died away, they turned 


“WE SHOULD NOT HAVE TAKEN THAT KISS” 81 


again to their own affairs, not knowing what had really 
happened. 

An uneasy embarrassment had fallen between them after 
Charley had spoken of the ocarino. 

They were both serious; far more so than they should have 
allowed themselves to be. Safety, they knew, lay in a spir¬ 
ited and playful forgetfulness. But the innocent ocarino had 
altered their mood, and they sat, saying nothing, but under¬ 
standing much. 

“Constance,” Charley said suddenly, “give me your hand!” 

Her blue eyes were startled, but without hesitation she 
placed her hands in his. 

“We said to each other once, long ago, that we would eat 
the lotus leaves together, and find a pleasure in forgetfulness. 
Do you remember how frankly we spoke that first afternoon? 
You said there was a Presbyterian streak in you, although 
you were a modern woman? And we agreed that we would 
not make our hours together a vulgar episode?” 

She nodded, her lashes hiding her eyes. 

“Was it your idea, then—or your wish, even—that all this 
was to be only an interlude? That you would go back to 
Boston—and that would be the end?” 

“I don't know.” She faltered. 

“Constance! When are you going home?” 

She caught her breath furtively. 

“Soon!” she whispered. 

“Within a month?” 

“Perhaps—within a week.” 

“This may be our very last afternoon together?” 

She nodded, biting her lip. 

“Constance—we cannot separate without an understanding. 
We both know our hearts. We must face ourselves.” 

“I am afraid-” she murmured. 



82 BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

He clasped her hand fiercely, his eyes embracing her, as 
he said: 

“We must not fear the truth any longer. You have a right 
to know what I really am, and what I really think. Will you 
listen to me?” 

The pressure of her hand in his was answer. 

He told her the truth about himself. Hurryingly, harshly, 
he disclosed the sordid facts,—his dissatisfaction with life; 
the lack of sympathy between Clara and himself, the incoher¬ 
ent promise of his dreams. At last he told her about the visit 
of his relatives the night before. 

“Now what does all this mean?” he cried. “It means that 
my father-in-law and all the rest of them want me to wake 
up, as they call it. They want me to be like the rest of this 
place. Constance, I do not know what it is, but there is some¬ 
thing different in me. There is something inside my heart 
crying to be horn! It is like a sweet pain, an anguish which 
I can hug to me and nourish. Since I have known you, it has 
been stronger, more demanding, more insistent. There is 
something the world wants in me—I don’t know what it is, 
but I know these people and this city will crush it out of me, 
if I do not take care.” 

She pressed his hand, the light of daring in her eyes. 

“Why do you stay here?” she urged. “There is such a 
thing as a divorce. You could get your freedom—and then!” 

“But Clara-” 

“What about her?” 

“Don’t you see, Constance, that I can’t drop her like a 
wornout suit of clothes? I don’t love her. I never should 
have married her. But now that I have married her, and she 
does love me, what can I do but pity her? Suppose that I 
left her, and she killed herself? I would have that on my 
conscience for eternity!” 

“You pity her?” 

“I pity her all the time.” 


“WE SHOULD NOT HAVE TAKEN THAT KISS” 83 


“I can’t understand. How can any one pity a woman like 
that? She doesn’t deserve pity, or anything else but her 
freedom!” 

“She doesn’t want to be free from me. I wish to God she 
did!” 

“She doesn’t know that she does, you mean!” 

“Constance—don’t you believe me when I tell you I want 
to find a way out? I want you! If I have you, all my dreams 
come true. I can get out of me what is inside me, torturing 
to be let loose—if you are near! But I want to be fair and 
decent to Clara!” 

“Charley! Charley! You to talk about the typical citizen! 
That is your besetting weakness. You should be strong! 
You should seize your dreams! You should be faithful to 
your own heart! Your wife is keeping you by a false claim. 
I am afraid there is no hope—for us—Charley. Oh, why did 
you ever speak? Why didn’t you let me go and-” 

“Constance! Don’t say anything else. You are right. I 
have been false to my own heart. I have been false to my 
dreams! There it is! It is you who have been strong, I who 
have been weak! After all, I have been an insolent prisoner, 
but that is all. I have let Clara and her father be my jailers. 
Constance, if there were a way-” 

He caught her in his arms, his lips almost touching hers. 

“If there were?” she repeated tensely. 

“If I can be free, free to make you my own—will you come 
to me?” 

“You must be strong!” she murmured. “I can love you 
only if you are strong. Free yourself! Seize your dreams 
and make them living realities. Then call to me, wherever 
you are, and I will come to you!” 

A tear trembled on her lashes. 

“Constance—kiss me!” 

The winds encouraged them in lingering murmurs, and the 



84 BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

sunlight blessed them in their first flaming and passionate 
embrace. 

He released her roughly. 

With a sudden stiffening of his arms he thrust her face 
away while he rose unsteadily. In astonishment and alarm 
she looked up at him, unable to comprehend the meaning of 
such a swift and violent alteration. 

Written on his countenance was a parable beyond all trans¬ 
lation; of hope defeated, of old and baffled spiritual hunger. 

“Constance!” he said hoarsely. “I lied to you!” 

“What is wrong?” she faltered. 

“I lied to you, I tell you, and I lied to myself! I don’t love 
you. I said I did, but I don’t. I never have loved you! I 
never can love you, Constance! It is all a bitter mockery!” 

“Charley!” she gasped. “Are you mad?” 

He laughed, quite like a lunatic. He was standing very 
close to her, looking down into her eyes, but slowly he began 
to back away. 

“I suppose I am mad,” he said with a queer catch in his 
voice. “And yet, Constance, not a moment ago you asked me 
to be strong. Very well, then! I shall be strong enough to 
tell you the truth, and the truth is—the terrible truth is-” 

He paused, gazing at her in intent anguish, as if he dreaded 
to inflict the pain which he knew his utterance would bring. 
Her lips were quivering. 

“At least tell me what you mean,” she said tremulously. 

“All your life you will hate me,” he said dully. “But it is 
better that you hate me now and know the worst. Those 
months we have been together—those sweet, dear months in 
Arcady—I have played once more the dreaming fool. I 
dreamed that you loved me, but worse than that, I dreamed 
that I loved you! Constance, you don’t know what that 
means! You don’t know what I have to give with that love, 
and what that love demands! You were my dream woman, 



“WE SHOULD NOT HAVE TAKEN THAT KISS” 85 


bearing in your sure white hands all the good gifts for which 
I prayed. 

“God! We ought never to have trespassed over the border 
of that dream. We should never have plucked the sacred 
flower, for look, at our profane touch, already it has 
withered!” 

“Charley, please tell me what you mean!” 

“I mean that you are not worthy of my dream.” 

She looked at him in incredible horror at the sheer bru¬ 
tality of his words. 

“You are not my dream woman!” he repeated. “You are 
only a woman, only flesh when I wanted fire, only blood and 
bone when I sought the airy lightness of spin-drift and the 
lacy spray of the sea! All my days, Constance, I have groped 
in the dark, seeking the wayward hand of Aphrodite. But 
Aphrodite is dead! Long ago she died, before there were 
such things as rouge and cold cream and brassieres. Venus 
is a corpse at the bottom of the sea! No love is left in the 
world. Nothing but fleshly bodies, lips and teeth and garters 
and straps and shoes and frocks—realities. I dreamed of the 
perfect woman and now-” 

She was quivering as she stood up confronting him in regal, 
if wounded pride. 

“It would be just as well,” she said, between compressed, 
pale lips, “if you were definite. Nothing that you can say 
could hurt me any more now than what you have already 
said. At least, may I not ask you to name the thing which 
has so distressed your aesthetic sensibilities?” 

Suddenly he drew his handkerchief from his pocket and 
struck it across his lips. Then he held it out to her and on 
it was a scarlet stain. 

“See that!” he cried tauntingly. “See that! The bloody 
imprint of the real in a real world—a universe stained with 
reality! Your lipstick—my God!” 


86 BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

“You are insulting and absurd!” she cried, in gasping 
fury. 

“Insulting—yes. And absurd—no doubt. But I am acting 
only as you bade me, my dear. ‘Be strong!’ you said, and I 
am strong enough to tell you what I think. Oh, you have 
been clever! I have no wish to deny that you were clever, 
my dear! I never suspected that you used a lipstick. It was 
a most artful device. From the very first I believed the red 
on your mouth was the red of nature’s own blood, the scarlet 
mark of health. But your hand must have trembled this 
afternoon as you sat at your dressing table. A lipstick—my 
God! Can you imagine Venus with a lip stick? Can you 
fancy Aphrodite powdering her nose or Juliet with a depila¬ 
tory? Great Lord God Almighty! These are the damned 
realities that hold a wake over the casket of dead romance! 
My beautiful Constance! We should have said good-by in 
Arcady. I had idealized you and I should have gone on 
remembering you as that dream phantom I had evoked. We 
should never have taken that kiss. Then I should never have 
awakened. I should have dreamed on—just dreamed on. I 
should never have tasted the unsavory mess with which you 
painted your mouth. Your lips were a lie and a fraud, and 
if that is so, your heart is another kind of fraud, daubed with 
some other kind of paint, and your soul dyed with something 
worse yet! I know that I am a fool, but I did seek in you 
the perfect thing—and I found a lipstick! Just another 
dream gone to smash!” 

She gave a little cry of utter wound and shame and con¬ 
tempt for him, and, turning from him, fled, leaving him 
altogether alone. 


CHAPTER TEN 


BETTER TO DIE IN THE WILDERNESS THAN- 

It was an utterly indefensible thing which he had done to 
Constance. Charley realized that he had addressed to her an 
insult for which there was neither palliation nor apology. 

Yet, even in his regrets, he could not escape a pleased 
satisfaction; his conscience acclaimed him a free personality 
because he had spoken the truth. 

So much of his spiritual liberty, at least, he had made 
secure. Clearly enough he understood how Constance must 
now hate him, but he also knew that she could not despise 
him. He hoped that she would understand, but even with 
understanding he knew he must not expect forgiveness. 

He had acted from the simplest, the most direct and char¬ 
acteristic impulse. He was a fool, and he knew he was a fool. 
Being a fool, he had no wish to be wise, nor the capacity to 
wish to be different from what he was. Of an imperfect 
world, he demanded perfection. 

Constance with her lipstick was no more than the snow- 
scarfed streets of his boyhood, invaded and despoiled by the 
tracks of laundry wagon wheels. 

Both were a violation. 

After Constance had gone, in flushed and pride-riven anger, 
he sat on their bench and mused. Did he, or did he not, 
abominate mouth rouge? The answer that his brain returned, 
after judicious analysis, was that he did not. Lipsticks were 
quite all right in their place. Simply their place was not on 
the lips of his love. Cissie Strieker might redden her charms 
with them, and give no offense to her department store swain. 

87 


88 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


But not his dream woman! 

There you had it! There it was! Wasn’t it about time to 
abjure such insane folly? To wake up? To realize that 
there was not, and could not, in the nature of the universe, 
be found on earth the perfection he sought? 

The best of women used lipsticks. They powdered their 
noses, and in obscene privacy employed depilatories. They 
were subject to the mortal mechanism of digestion. They 
were realities. 

Was it not madness to pursue such beckoning and disap¬ 
pointing prayers? The exquisite and gauzy fabric of the love 
he could imagine for himself was not merely a remote ideal, 
difficult of achievement; it was a literal impossibility. Women 
were like that! 

Why not take the best the real world had to give him? 
Surely that best was Constance! She was almost perfection. 
Why not seek her out? Why not go to her, humbled and 
contrite, and ask her to forgive? 

He doubted if she would forgive. What woman would? 
Yet she might, if she really loved him. 

Charley hesitated. At length he lit a cigarette. 

“No!” he said to himself, good-humoredly. “No! I’ll be 
damned if I do!” 

In no degree was he blinded to the ridiculous implications 
of the act he had committed. 

In the moment of love’s surrender to his plea, he had 
boxed love on the ears and tweaked love on the nose. It was 
an incident of which only a lunatic could be proud. Yet, 
during that kiss, Charley had been engaged not so much in 
feeling, as he should have been, but in thinking, which was 
an occupation foreign and inappropriate to the moment. 

What feeling he had had was nothing more than a shocked 
and defeated disillusion. His thoughts had been precise, and 
their precision had been a warning, an alarm to his soul. 
When he should have been thrilling with passion, he was, 


BETTER TO DIE IN WILDERNESS THAN— 89 

instead, reflecting that life shared with Constance would ulti¬ 
mately come to be quite 3 s unbearable as life with Clara, 
day in and day out. Indeed, before the kiss was over, such 
were the rapid turnings of his thought, he was convinced that 
he might come to dislike Constance much more than his wife, 
because he would have been more profoundly disappointed. 
And for Constance he would never be able to summon forth 
the graceful salvation of pity. 

The situation had the undeniable salt of humor. In spite 
of telling himself that he should feel like a cad—which he 
unfortunately did not—Charley could not put down the 
plaguing smile. When one came to think about it, the inci¬ 
dent was droll. Charley wondered if all tragedies were not 
droll. He failed completely to pity Constance; he forced 
himself to contemplate the indignity he had put upon her, 
and managed only to find a devilish unction within, in con¬ 
ceding that her part in the matter was touched with the mask 
of the comic. 

It was easier to contemplate this, because it was he who 
was really the clown. And what a simpleton of a clown! 
Now that his devotion to the ideal had been tested in the 
brazen alembic of circumstance, he could appraise it for the 
poor stuff that it was. What he was seeking was much more 
hopeless than the philosopher’s stone. After all, chemistry 
might yet reach an alchemy in which all the baser metals 
might be transfused into pure gold. 

But women? 

Ah, there was a different quest altogether. Lipsticks, nose- 
puffs and depilatories! Ethereal womanhood, shrived of such 
artifice, was inconceivable. Venus was dead, at the bottom 
of the sea, and one would need to wait until the resurrection 
day for her to rise again. 

“Very well, then,” he said to himself. “I will wait until 
resurrection day!” 

At his own sensations he could only marvel and be amazed. 


90 BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

Somehow he felt cleansed and bathed in his heart. Uttering 
the truth was a difficult but splendid experience. He could 
not bring himself to the normal and conventional mood of 
regrets. Of course, he would miss Constance. He knew now 
that he loved her mind and her soul, but that contact with her 
body had been a betrayal of his ideals. In all else she had 
been genuine, but he had found her lips a cheat. 

That it was all preposterous he was quite assured. Yet 
having persisted in the preposterous, he felt oddly at home 
with himself. If his heart was still hungry, he had had the 
dignity of refusing a stone when he had asked for bread. 

In a gravely jocund spirit, he argued within himself. 

“Am I a fool to refuse a compromise? Should I not stop 
being such a dunce?” 

Something immutable replied; something comparable to 
the majestic voice of an organ speaking through the aisles 
and arches of a deserted cathedral, gave him reply: 

“It is better to die in the wilderness than to be despoiled 
of the Egyptians.” 

“Very well, then!” he acquiesced. “Very well!” 

And a little later, he reflected: 

“I shall continue to wander in the wilderness. What do 
the Philistines matter? Perhaps there may be a promised 
land, somewhere. Who knows that?” 

He shook his head, as if he had found himself incorrigible, 
and turned to go home. 

In getting himself arrested for trespassing on the grass, 
Henry Strieker was a victim of circumstances. 

Legally, his offense was clear. He had violated one of the 
public park ordinances, which had been passed unanimously 
by the first and second branches of the city council, and signed 
by Mayor Venable, who had long since moldered in his 
grave. 

That ordinance was unequivocal. It forbade any human 
being to implant feet on the grass of the public parks and 


BETTER TO DIE IN WILDERNESS THAN— 91 

squares, under penalty of the law. It is a characteristic 
method of the city to dispose of all difficulties by the passage 
of an ordinance. It keeps the first and second branches of 
the city council from becoming bored. Later, the ordinances 
keep the police from being bored, and, after them, the station 
house magistrates. 

Of late, members of the City Beautiful Commission had 
turned to the ordinance, after indignantly observing the 
flagrant violations of its provisions by unthinking barbarians. 
The feet of foreigners were tramping the green life out of the 
parks. To be a member of the City Beautiful Commission, 
one had to have, not aesthetic background but political influ¬ 
ence. In behalf of the ordinance known as “Keep Off the 
Grass” the commission had swung its political thunder, with 
the result that park policemen were making arrests, and mag¬ 
istrates were imposing fines—because policemen and magis¬ 
trates are also politicians and respect political thunder. 

Of these circumstances was Henry Strieker a victim. 
Kneeling on the grass, he became fair game for the park 
policeman; an instrument by which the officer could show the 
politicians upon whom he depended that he knew when an 
ordinance was being violated that the politicians did not 
want violated. 

Henry had walked on a few feet of the several hundred 
acres of grass in Druid Hill Park, and he was, therefore, 
carried in an auto patrol to the not unbeautiful red-bricked 
Jefferson Police Station and lined up in front of a legal brass 
rail. Enthroned behind the oaken counter was a swag-bellied 
lieutenant, and two janizaries in blue uniforms. 

These men insisted on Henry’s revealing his name, and 
much other personal data, the information being inscribed on 
a blotter. He was then searched, to determine whether he 
carried upon his person any deadly weapon. 

“He was creeping through the grass,” declared the police¬ 
man. “He looks like a desperate character!” 

At this unwarranted assault upon his good name and char- 


92 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


acter, Henry burst into tears and passionately demanded 
permission to telephone his father. 

The Lieutenant gravely considered this request before he 
acquiesced. Finally he allowed Henry to go to the telephone 
and call up a number on the Wolfe Exchange. 

“Helloa, pop!” whimpered Henry. “This is Henry. Say, 
pop! Fm—I’m—I’m-” 

“What?” cried Mr. Strieker irritably. 

“Fm—Fm—Fm —in the station house!” 

“You’re what?” 

“Station house! Fm arrested. Fm locked up! Fm a 
prisoner!” 

“What?” 

“The police have got me!” 

“The police? Henry! What’s the matter?” 

“Nothing’s the matter!” 

“There is something the matter, too! What did you do?” 

“I didn’t do nothing, pop!” 

“Well, but what did you do?” 

“I walked on the grass in Druid Hill Park!” 

“Why, Henry! What did you do such a thing as that, for?” 

“I had to, pop! I had to!” 

“What for did you have to?” 

“Charley!” 

“Oh! So Charley is the man who put you behind the bars! 
I always knew that fellow wasn’t any good}! He’ll be made 
to feel this, son! You are a martyr, my boy. Where are 
you?” 

“I don’t know, pop! I don’t know anything about this 
neighborhood! ” 

“Well, let me talk to the chief of police!” 

Henry, still holding on to the receiver, turned to the 
Lieutenant. 

“Will you please talk to my pop?” he faltered. 

The Lieutenant considered the matter sufficiently but at 
length consented to talk to his prisoner’s pop. 



CHAPTER ELEVEN 


DAY IN, DAY OUT 

If Clara had known that her husband had kissed a girl in the 
park, and that her brother was under arrest in a police sta¬ 
tion, her state of mind might have been different from what 
it was that Saturday afternoon. 

Like unto every other typical housewife in the city, Clara 
was at that moment preparing for one of the great phases of 
the ritual of typical existence—the Saturday journey to 
market. 

Going to market on Saturday was an obligation little less 
important than that of going to church on Sunday. It was an 
enterprise to be approached with a becoming dignity, and a 
chaste severity. 

After the departure of Mr. Harris that forenoon, Clara felt 
better. Mr. Harris always made her feel better. Clara had 
never stopped to analyze the effect his weekly visits produced 
upon her, but if she had, she would have attributed her feel¬ 
ing of upliftment to the godly aura in which Mr. Harris 
moved. Their vibrations fairly sang together and made a 
tune of their conversations. 

While she was preparing her simple lunch in the kitchen— 
a meal which, regardless of its simplicity, Clara called “din¬ 
ner”—she sang various favorites from the Baptist hymnal— 
There is a Fountain Filled With Blood, into which she in¬ 
fused a real soul fervor; There’s a Land That is Fairer Than 
Day, which had a rollicking lilt to its melody highly grateful 

93 


94 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


to her soul, and In a Lonely Graveyard, which filled her with 
a wholly light and pleasant melancholy. 

The dishes washed and wiped and stacked back on the 
kitchen dresser shelves, covered with blue strips of perforated 
paper, Clara arrayed herself in her second best dress. Out 
of the closet under the front staircase she took a white wicker 
basket, almost of laundry proportions, the handle of which 
she suspended in the crook of her elbow. At the bottom of 
the basket she put the imitation cut glass bowl which had 
served at last night’s feast. When she was finally assured that 
the money in her pocketbook was all right, and that she had 
her list of provisions, she left the house and walked down to 
the corner, a nickel and two pennies clutched tightly in her 
hand for car-fare. 

She was on her way, a unit in a vast and skirted army, 
moving on its way, with its hundred thousand white wicker 
baskets swung on a hundred thousand elbows, from the four 
points of the compass, all bound for the huge bazaar of 
vegetables, fish, breads, fruits and meats, which was known 
wherever people eat as Lexington Market. 

Of course, Clara could have gone to Lafayette Market just 
as well. 

Lafayette Market, however, was too familiar an arena for 
the great adventure of Saturday afternoon. It was only one 
“square” long; it was only a few “squares” from Clara’s 
house; it was lacking in the majesty of size befitting the occa¬ 
sion when Clara made the biggest purchases of her week. 

On Saturday afternoon, the typical housewife lays in pro¬ 
visions for the greater part of the next seven days. Clara, 
and women like her, never spend so much money in one com¬ 
pressed gesture, at any other time, except in the rare times 
when furniture or clothing is bought. Thus the week-end 
market visit is invested with a peculiar importance, not lightly 
to be regarded. Clara preferred to spend an extra fourteen 


95 


DAY IN, DAY OUT 

cents, though she felt it to be an extravagance, to ride down 
to the central market of the town,—the far-flung, pitched- 
roofed sheds that extend from Eutaw to Pine Streets. 

When Clara got on a Carey Street car, she observed with 
satisfaction that there were about fourteen other women on 
board, all with their wicker baskets, and all bound for the 
same destination. It pleased Clara to feel that she belonged 
in the same procession with them; that she was typical, like 
all the rest of them, and in serene conformity with their 
customs. 

As she left the street car with the rest of the typical house¬ 
wives and their baskets, and walked a block to the market, 
Clara was flushed and tingled with anticipation. This was 
adventure. 

Her first stop was at Kenny’s tea, coffee and sugar store. 
From her earliest girlhood, Clara had gone to Kenny’s on 
Saturday afternoons. It was something to be looked forward 
to, because there was always a premium distributed on the 
market day. One Saturday, a colored vase of clay, on which 
an angelic maiden would be leading an insane sheep around a 
yellow bed-post, would be given away. Next week a card¬ 
board whistle would be forthcoming with each purchase, or 
a fan, or perhaps a pencil sharpener. Until this very Satur¬ 
day afternoon Clara still felt the childhood thrill as she 
crossed the threshold of the store; she was still wondering 
what Kenny’s would give out this week. 

With a smile to the bald-headed clerk in his shirt sleeves 
who always waited on her, and who remembered her when 
she was a little girl, Clara gave her order. She bought two 
pounds of sugar, one pound of Mocha and Java mixed coffee, 
unground—Clara used an old-fashioned kitchen coffee mill, 
with a squeaky handle—and a quarter of a pound of Ceylon 
tea. 

With this and the premium—a long paper scroll of red and 
yellow roses, with a brass eyelet at the top for suspension 


96 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


purposes—Clara walked out of Kenny’s, her basket on her 
arm, ready for the market. 

The neighborhood in which she found herself was a tumult 
of hawking cries, the sonorous snorts of trucks and automo¬ 
biles, the rumble of wheels, the crash and clamor of street 
cars, the shrill whistle of peanut-roasters, and the mingled 
smells of raw foods. For blocks, or “squares,” in all direc¬ 
tions ranged temporary stalls and booths, covered with gray, 
patched canvas, where men in their shirt sleeves and trousers 
of corduroy, sold vegetables and fruits and poultry—the 
outer fringe of market folk, not so prosperous that they could 
afford stalls under the big sheds. 

With these Clara perversely refused to traffic. Her custom 
went to recognized dealers, with painted signs above their 
stalls in the market proper. 

Crossing the asphalt street, through a litter of lost food 
and waste paper, Clara entered the first of the long market 
houses, extending for three blocks—an arcade of three parallel 
ranges, the center with lifted roof devoted to an unbroken and 
bloody array of meat stalls, flanked on either side with lower- 
roofed vistas of vegetables, fruits and other edibles. 

No society woman entering a ball-room was ever prouder 
or happier than Clara upon her weekly entrance into the cool 
and vast arena of the Lexington meat market. The fresh 
animal smell of the stalls was as incense to her nostrils. The 
stalls, stretching away as far as the eye could reach, were 
brilliantly illuminated with fly-specked electric bulbs, above 
which glistened freshly painted signs, bearing the owner’s 
name and an expressionistic rendering of the nature of his 
business; the sallow countenance of a lamb, or the melancholy 
fore-face of a bull. 

Upon everything there was the dull red tone of dead flesh 
and dried blood. Piled upon the marble slabs, and the cotton 
covers with their scarlet smears, were ponderous haunches of 
red beef and sickly yellow suet; purple rolls of lamb and 


97 


DAY IN, DAY OUT 

veal, pyramids of sausages, bologna, skinned pigs swinging 
from iron hooks, beeves with a crimson slit down their mid¬ 
dles, their two halves thrust apart with wooden sticks,—meat 
in pounds and tons arrayed, decked with the withering 
branches of trees to keep the flies away. 

The sound of steel saws, cutting splinteringly through 
bones; the hack of the cleaver on wooden blocks, the buzz of 
the electric chopper, eternally mincing rejected cuts into 
Hamburger, the shrill voices of women raised in bargain and 
badinage, made the long, high vaulted passage echo with 
incoherence. 

There was the heavy smell of opened ice-boxes in the air, 
combatting the warm, sanguine odor of carved red flesh. 
Around Clara’s feet two black cats spat at each other, and 
then raced away, to disappear under the dark cavern of a 
stall; a moment later, a long, gray rat—long as from Clara’s 
finger-tips to her elbow—scampered from one counter to 
another with a defiant screech. 

Clara had her own meat men—one who dealt in beef, 
another in lamb and veal. From these it was her custom to 
buy the piece de resistance of the Sunday noon meal, usually 
a roast of one kind, or another. Mr. Fowler, who kept the 
beef stall, was more like a friend. Clara met him every 
Sunday in church; they were fellow members. 

“I want a roast to-day, Mr. Fowler,” Clara explained with 
a smile. 

As he exhumed a shaky chunk of meat for her inspection, 
Mr. Fowler asked cheerfully regarding Charley’s health. 

“Just the same as ever!” replied Clara seriously. 

“Still can’t get him to follow the Lord, eh?” clucked the 
butcher, as he set the meat swaying on the whitely enameled 
scales. 

“Still can’t get him to follow the Lord,” confirmed Clara, 
with a martyr’s glance upward to the roof. 

“Keep on praying!” laughed Mr. Fowler. “That’s what 


98 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

Preacher Wharton says, you know. Keep on praying and the 
Lord will hear. That will be just one dollar and thirty-seven 
cents!” 

When the roast was deposited in her basket, Clara bade 
Mr. Fowler good day, and passed on to another stall, where 
canned meats of many kinds were retailed. Clara did not 
like to deal with this man, because he was a Jew. She always 
said, apologetically, to her neighbors: “I hate to deal with 
that curly-haired sheeny, but he has the best chip beef in the 
market, and I’ve tried them all—week in and week out, I’ve 
tried them all!” 

The delicacy known as chip beef—highly seasoned canned 
beef, sliced to the thinness of tissue paper—was the invariable 
chief ingredient of Clara’s cold supper on Sunday nights. 

The time had now arrived for Clara to turn into the left 
corridor—a region where the products of the neighboring 
truck farms were tumbled in prodigal and odorous profusion. 
Old women whose red cheeks glistened beneath blue aprons 
tied around their heads; plump and ripe young maidens; 
unshaven farmers, bearded old men and little boys and girls 
all were pressed into the business of selling these vegetables. 

And what vegetables were not there? Baskets and boxes 
and bags and sacks and barrels and pans and pots and buckets 
and troughs and wheelbarrows of vegetables—red, ripe toma¬ 
toes, brown, dusty potatoes, white and purple turnips, bundles 
of asparagus tied with a string, lima beans, string beans, wet 
green heads of luscious lettuce, green peas, blood-red beets 
with bobbing green plumes, juicy white corn exposed where 
the green and golden wrappings had been gashed with a 
knife, long white spring onions with emerald tops, ridged 
pepper bulbs of crimson and green, huge purple eggplants, 
fat yellow squashes, cabbages, spinach, kale and carrots, pars¬ 
nips, parsley, celery, rhubarb, and cauliflower, and okra. 

And fruits! The Italians, who monopolized this business, 
were not content with the rich fruitage of the Eastern Shore 


99 


DAY IN, DAY OUT 

and the orchards of Western Maryland; their province em¬ 
braced all the gardens of the land, and on their stalls, decked 
with gayly-tinted oilcloths, were heaped the spring and sum¬ 
mer treasures of the earth. Golden and red bananas from the 
Bermudas; oranges from California, and lemons from Flor¬ 
ida; dates and pomegranates out of the odorous East; royal 
grapes from king’s gardens, scarlet persimmons, apples, 
peaches, pears, little golden nuggets of yellow tomatoes, water 
melons, cantalopes, strawberries, blackberries, huckleberries, 
raspberries, gooseberries, figs from queen’s acres, prickly 
pineapples with cactus tops, red cherries with taunting stems, 
hundreds of thousands of berries and fruits, flung in prodigal 
heaps for the hundred thousand typical housewives and their 
empty wicker baskets. 

Nor were these all. There were bread stalls, heaped high 
with brown rolls, raisin breads, cakes, pretzels on woolen 
strings, and buckets of iced cookies. There were candy mer¬ 
chants, with a colorful display of brown, and green, and pink 
taffies in flat tin pans; jars of red-striped peppermint sticks 
and brown horehound strips; spreads of peanut “brittle” and’ 
great glass casks of chocolate drops. 

Through this long vista of foods trudged Clara, up one 
side of the market and down the other, pausing at one familiar 
booth after another, her basket growing fuller and heavier at 
each stop. The glass bowl was filled with a creamy paste 
known as schmierkase, a sour delicacy which Charley pas¬ 
sionately detested. As her deliberately chosen final purchase, 
Clara bought ten cents’ worth of mixed taffy, tapped out of 
the tin pans by the gray-haired candy man with a small iron 
mallet. 

Aching from the weight of her basket, she hurried with 
short, quick steps to the corner and waited for the crowded 
car which would take her—and a load of other typical house¬ 
wives—home from the noisy market. 


100 BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

And that was the way Saturday afternoon was, week in and 
week out. 

“No wise man is ever governed by his first impulses. God 
is on the side of the man who thinks!” 

This was the impressive utterance which Mr. Strieker deliv¬ 
ered to Henry, as they rode in the street car to the Strieker 
dwelling in the Northeast section. 

There had been a disagreeable interlude at the Jefferson 
Police Station, where Mr. Strieker, by depositing the maxi¬ 
mum amount of the fine, had reclaimed his tearful son from 
the clutch of the law. 

Mr. Strieker had expressed his feelings to the Lieutenant 
forcibly and with dignity. Whereupon the Lieutenant had 
expressed his feelings with even more force and with infinitely 
more dignity. Mr. Strieker had retorted in kind. The Lieu¬ 
tenant had then threatened to lock up the father and son in 
the same cell. 

Mr. Strieker had instantly relapsed into a red and perfect 
silence. 

Later, while waiting for the street car, he had heard the 
whole story, with much shaking of his head, and clearing of 
his throat. 

“It’s all Charley’s fault,” he said decisively. “That’s what 
those kind of things always lead to. A man who deserts the 
straight and narrow path of virtue brings sorrow upon all his 
loved ones. To think of Charley Turner out in the park with 
a woman! I knew it! I knew it!” 

“Are you going to tell Clara?” asked Henry hopefully. 

It was at this juncture that Mr. Strieker instructed his son 
in the wisdom of reflection, and defined God’s position with 
respect to men who think. 


CHAPTER TWELVE 


exposed! 


Charley walked home. 

Under the swing of the exuberance which filled him, he set 
off valiantly through the curving walks of Druid Hill Park, 
making toward the brown and ancient entrance at the end of 
Madison Avenue. It was out of the way, but he was finding 
himself such companionable company that he elected to pro¬ 
long the experience. 

Over the slopes of the park paths he walked, rapidly, and 
almost gayly. All the way was familiar, for he loved the 
old park. It was one of the few places in the city to which 
he rendered ungrudging homage. He knew its remote cor¬ 
ners, off toward Woodberry way, as well as most people knew 
the boat lake, with its miniature house, and its miniature 
green trees on a miniature gray island. Under the proud vista 
of high encountering poplars on the Mall he and Clara had 
walked in their courtship days. They had walked around the 
reservoir on cool May nights, and kissed under the stingy 
monument to Columbus. In ferned dells they had whispered 
their love; they had ordered soda water in the Mansion House, 
relic of the days before 1860 when the seven hundred acres 
of gentle green slopes were not a park, but an estate. To¬ 
gether, Clara and he had watched the flock of gray sheep 
grazing on the hillsides, herded by a bearded shepherd, a 
very Walt Whitman of a fellow, and his barking terrier. 

Out of the park after an hour’s tramping, he hurried south 
on the western side of Madison Avenue, where the three* 

101 


102 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


storied houses with the white marble steps shut out the setting 
sun and cast the sidewalk in pleasant shadow. By this time 
he was humming to himself; a certain emotional sign. His 
heart was singing in shameless elation. 

He had forgotten that he was a coward and a fool. 

He was curiously and perversely pleased. 

As Charley was walking homeward, and as Clara was un¬ 
packing her market basket on the kitchen table, there was a 
family conference of the most weighty importance in the 
house of Mr. Strieker. 

Something had to be done. 

With his accustomed sagacity, Mr. Strieker had stage- 
managed the convocation artfully. Until Mrs. Strieker had 
emptied her market-basket—she was just returning from the 
Belair Market when Mr. Strieker and Henry reached home— 
nothing was said. Cissie and Cousin Elsie were maneuvered 
into taking a walk, for John Strieker realized the problem 
they were to face should not be published into the ears of 
innocent girls. 

As it happened, Cissie and Cousin Elsie accepted the hint 
without protest. Cissie had just borrowed from a pal in the 
Eastern High School a copy of Women In Love and was 
anxious to acquaint Cousin Elsie with its iniquities. 

The conference was held in the front second-story bed¬ 
room, with Mrs. Strieker sitting in a rocking chair by the 
window, Henry lolling on the nuptial bed of his parents, and 
Mr. Strieker, in a portentous attitude held within the angle 
of the bureau mirror, to which he cast occasional glances of 
critical inquiry. 

All of the dreadful story had been told, an attack of 
hysteria being averted in Mrs. Strieker only by the husbandly 
eloquence of Mr. Strieker. It was her daughter, Mrs. Strieker 
gaspingly explained, of whom she was thinking. Her 
daughter! Her own dear daughter Clara! 


EXPOSED! 


103 


“And what about me?” asked Henry indignantly. 

The question was almost fatal. Did he think his mother 
had forgotten? Her son, her Henry, to have been arrested 
and taken to a station house! 

Until Mrs. Strieker began to speak the stark tragedy of the 
affair had been partly obscured in the minds of father and 
son. But Mrs. Strieker banished the haze in a rainfall of 
weeping. The family was disgraced, first by Charley Turner’s 
wicked behavior with a woman, and second by the arrest of 
Henry, for which Charley Turner was wholly to blame. 

“It would never have happened,” Mrs. Strieker declared at 
frequent intervals, “if Charley Turner hadn’t carried on his 
onriness!” 

“I never liked Charley. I never did like him!” was Henry’s 
remindful contribution. “I never have any use for anybody 
that hasn’t any use for his job. I like my job. And Charley 
ought to like his job. And if he doesn’t like it, then the thing 
for him to do is to get out! He doesn’t even call it a job. 
He calls it a grind, and with a swear word in front of it that 
begins with a d and ends with an n!” 

“Oh, Henry!” fluttered his mother. “Don’t!” 

“So he calls the brush business a grind, does he?” said 
Mr. Strieker, between pursed lips. “A grind? A grind? I 
know what he ought to be told. No job is grinding, if it is 
lubricated with interest and enthusiasm!” 

“Gee, pop!” 

Henry sat up on the bed, and stared in open-mouthed 
admiration. 

“Is that an original, pop?” 

Mr. Strieker smiled sheepishly. 

“That,” he said, clearing his throat, “is an original, Henry. 
And I hope you remember it as you battle your way through 
this old life!” 

At the moment, however, Mrs. Strieker had no ears for 
originals, no matter how clever they might be. Her heart was 


104 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


bleeding for her arrested son and her betrayed daughter, and 
her nerves wouldn’t stand much more. 

“Couldn’t you hear what they were talking about on that 
bench?” 

“No, mom! I didn’t have time,” pleaded Henry, at once 
defensive. “I was just settling myself to listen when-” 

“Oh!” cried Mrs. Strieker brokenly, and Henry said no 
more. 

“The same principles that govern the great business man in 
his mundane affairs must guide us here,” said Mr. Strieker, 
expanding his chest and glancing swiftly at the mirror. “We 
must plan our work. And then —we must work our plan!” 

“Oh, John,” fluttered Mrs. Strieker gratefully, “what would 
we all do without you!” 

“No one of us is indispensable, my dear,” replied Mr. 
Strieker, with a deprecatory flutter of his hand. “But I do 
try to be practical. I try to keep awake. And a man has got 
to keep awake to-day, or the world will pass him by. Some¬ 
thing has to be done. Clara is our daughter. We cannot see 
her deceived by her own husband. Clara has got to be told!” 

“Of course she’s got to be told!” cried Mrs. Strieker, 
flushing darkly. 

“I guess she has!” crowed Henry, settling himself more 
comfortably on the bed. 

John Strieker stuck his thumbs into his vest-holes and 
paraded slowly back and forth, his chin touching his tie-knot 
in deepest and most solemn cogitation. 

“We must decide upon the best way to tell her,” he mused 
aloud. “And who!” 

“I’ll tell her, pop!” said Henry eagerly. “I was there and 
saw the whole thing. I can tell her what that jane looks like, 
and everything. When Clara knows what’s up, she’ll want 
first-hand information!” 

Mr. Strieker paused, a depressed look in his eyes. His 


EXPOSED! 105 

glance encountered that of his wife and there passed a mutual 
compact between them. 

“No, Henry,” said his father decisively. “It is courageous 
of you, my boy, to suggest it. I know how your heart aches 
for your sister in this bitter hour. I know that you would like 
to comfort her. But this is a matter entirely too delicate for 
a young man to talk about to his sister.” 

He paused and blew his nose explosively. 

“No, Henry,” he said, with finality. “I couldn’t permit it. 
It is a disagreeable duty, my son. But fathers all through his¬ 
tory have had to do disagreeable things. I am not the first 
father in the world who dared to do his plain duty. I shall 
face the situation like a man and a Christian. 7 shall tell 
her!” 

A suppressed gulp came from Mrs. Strieker as she rose 
tragically and confronted her husband. 

“John,” she said tremulously. “In a time like this a girl 
needs her mother. I know Clara as only a mother knows her 
own daughter. You have been a good father, John, and I 
admire your fine spirit. But this is a mother’s place—a time 
when a girl needs her mother as she never needed her before!” 

A baffled light came into Mr. Strieker’s eyes. 

“But my love,” he protested. “You won’t be able to stand 
the ordeal. Your nerves are not the best, and you know it. 
I couldn’t think of letting you do it!” 

“She is my daughter! I am her mother!” wailed Mrs. 
Strieker. “I will, John! It’s my place!” 

“Wait!” cried Mr. Strieker, as if favored with an inspira¬ 
tion from on high. “We’ll both go to her! She’ll need us 
both!” 

Mrs. Strieker put her head against the vest pocket in which 
her husband kept his cigars, and wept copiously. But Henry 
rose indignantly from the bed. 

“Gee, pop!” he remonstrated. “7 ought to go along with 
you. 7 found out all about this thing!” 


106 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


“Let the boy go!” pleaded Mrs. Strieker. 

It was thus decided that all three should go upon the 
expedition to the home of Charley and Clara. 

Out in Guilford, Constance Lane sat in front of her mirror, 
and erased the traces of her rage and tears. 

“The cheap little fool!” she said to herself. “I should have 
known him for what he was all along. Why didn’t I say 
something to him? Just a poseur —and an ignorant, middle 
class poseur! I not worthy of him! The creature! Striking 
attitudes before me! Posturing! A middle-class imitation, 
nothing more! I’m glad I found him out in time!” 

She pensively toyed with a golden lipstick, then, with an 
angry grimace, threw it into the waste-basket. 

Supper was over. 

Charley was sitting in the dining room, with his feet against 
the mantelpiece, blowing into his ocarino a long, weird strain 
from the Scheherezade Suite of Rimski-Korsakoff. 

Clara was in the kitchen, splashing her hands in luke-warm 
dish water, gray and greasy. 

The door bell rang. 

Charley continued to blow into his instrument, unaware 
of the vindictive and contemptuous glance which Clara be¬ 
stowed upon him as she passed through the dining room tc 
open the front door. 

At the sound of low voices, Charley interrupted his melody. 
He recognized the throaty greeting of his father-in-law, the 
thin voice of his mother-in-law, and the whine of his brother- 
in-law. Despair crossed his face like a cloud. They had been 
there only the night before. What were they coming again 
for? 

A moment later, the three visitors, their faces somber and 
portentous, entered the dining room. 

“Good evening!” said Charley, without lowering his feet. 


EXPOSED! 


107 


“Good evening, Charley,” said Mr. Strieker gravely. 

“Hi, there!” said Henry. 

Mrs. Strieker refused to glance at her son-in-law, or to 
acknowledge his existence. 

Clara came in and urged them all to be seated. She was 
plainly puzzled at the unexpected call, but was too polite to 
make inquiries. 

“Clara,” said Mr. Strieker, after an ungainly pause, “we 
have come here on a very disagreeable duty!” 

Mrs. Strieker began to weep. 

“What do you mean, pop?” asked Clara, with an anxious 
glance at Charley. It was evident that she feared her husband 
was to be discharged at last. 

“No man could be sorrier for what I’ve got to say than your 
own father,” declared Mr. Strieker. “I would rather cut off 
my right hand than tell what it is my plain duty, as your 
father, to tell you!” 

“You’re going to get rid of Charley!” exclaimed Clara in 
a whisper. 

“Oh, Clara!” wept Mrs. Strieker. “Come into your mother’s 
arms!” 

With a wild glance at them all, Clara stood her ground. 

“Go on, pop!” she said. “Tell me!” 

“My daughter,” said Mr. Strieker, again clearing his throat, 
and twisting at his brushy mustache, “I must ask you to be 
brave. You must be brave enough to know the truth. For 
the truth shall make us free! ... We have come over here, 
Clara, to tell you something about your husband!” 

“Would you prefer that I retire?” asked Charley. 

“No!” exclaimed Mr. Strieker, with conscious courage. 
“John Strieker has never said a word behind a man’s back 
that he would not say to his face!” 

“That is an original,” said Charley. “Proceed!” 

“Put your feet down!” said Clara poisonously, but Charley 
did not disturb his pose. 


108 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


“Do proceed!” persisted Charley, who was innocently won¬ 
dering what Mr. Strieker meant to disclose. 

“I have received certain information,” continued Mr. 
Strieker, “which no father, placed as I find myself placed, 
could conceal. I must tell it. This information is absolutely 
reliable. It is strictly correct!” 

“Well, what is it?” prodded Charley, querulously. 

“Clara,” said Mr. Strieker, turning to address himself 
directly to his daughter, “I am sorry to say that you are being 
badly treated by your husband!” 

“Don’t I know it?” shrilled Clara. 

“You don’t know this. Ask him where he spent this after¬ 
noon!” 

“Yes, just ask him that!” echoed Henry. 

Mrs. Strieker continued to weep. 

A blanket of silence fell upon them, while Clara’s shoulders 
were hunched; her writhing hands clasped themselves together 
in front of her, and she stared at her husband. 

“Well,” she snapped at last. “Where were you this after¬ 
noon?” 

From the moment the Strickers had come into his dining 
room Charley had been wondering until John Strieker pro¬ 
pounded that riddle. Then Charley knew. The meaning of 
their solemn visit became clear. It did not matter to him 
how they had come upon the facts. They were there to tell 
Clara of Constance. 

He could not restrain a smile. It was a smile of amuse¬ 
ment at the inexcusable drollery of events. As long as he 
wooed Constance, no one suspected. But when he dismissed 
her- 

“Why don’t you answer?” cried Clara shrilly. 

“Yes! Why don’t you?” added Henry. 

“Perhaps it would be more interesting if your father told 
you,” replied Charley. 


EXPOSED! 109 

“Well, I’ll tell her!” screamed Mrs. Strieker, rising and 
approaching Clara with outstretched arms. 

“I’ll tell you, Clara, where that man was and what he was 
doing. He was out in the park with another woman!* 9 

“And / saw him!” cried Henry. 

“Yes, my daughter!” said Mr. Strieker. “That is where he 
was, and that was what he was doing. And Henry did see 

him! Thy sin shall find thee out!” 

% 

In the five minutes that followed, Charley was obliterated. 

Clara moaned and wept in her mother’s arms, mingling her 
tears and beating her breasts. Henry sat with folded arms 
staring accusingly at his brother-in-law, while Mr. Strieker 
went on tiptoe into the kitchen, shook his head dismally at 
the dish-pan, and drew Clara a glass of water. 

At every other moment, Clara threatened to faint. She 
refused the water which her father tried to thrust upon her. 
She hugged her mother, and loudly cried that she wished she 
had died before she ever left her home. 

By degrees her hysteria relented, and she became meas¬ 
urably calm. Then her mother and her father and her brother 
remained silent as she stood up and confronted her husband. 

“I don’t know why God doesn’t strike you dead!” she said 
chokingly. 

Mrs. Strieker murmured sympathetically. 

“Haven’t you anything to say for yourself?” asked Mr. 
Strieker in a tone that indicated his desire to be judicious at 
all costs. 

Charley slowly drew down his feet, until they touched the 
floor. Then he stood up, putting the chair away from him 
as he rose. He turned his back upon the mantelpiece, and 
leaned his shoulders negligently against it. 

He was not smiling, but there was a twinkle in his eye. 

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “I thank you!” 


110 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


Mrs. Strieker gave a gasp or horror at his calm impudence, 
and then resumed a violent sobbing. 

Mr. Strieker’s face grew red with anger. 

Henry Strieker sniffed with a contempt that was almost 
frankly feminine. 

“Now!” screamed Clara. “Now you just listen to him. 
Now you’ll hear the kind of man I’ve slaved for, day in and 
day out, ever since I’ve been married to him!” 

“Clara is right!” said Charley crisply. “If you will steel 
yourselves to listen, you will hear speaking the kind of man 
for whom she has slaved, day in and day out. But can I 
count on your listening?” 

He glanced at them inquiringly. 

“You’re not worth listening to!” declared old Mrs. Strieker 
savagely. “You’re not fit to black her shoes!” 

“If you have anything to say, we will hear you,” said Mr. 
Strieker pontifically. 

“I have very little to say,” said Charley. “And what little 
it is, I am afraid you will not understand. You must not 
mistake my sincere gratitude for insolence. Believe me, my 
dear in-laws, I am thankful. You have told Clara what I 
greatly wanted her to know, but lacked the courage to tell 
her. Please-” 

He checked a fomenting explosion of comment by a 
gesture. 

“You promised to listen. I shall not detain you long. 
You have told Clara that I was out in the park this afternoon 
with a woman. That is, unfortunately, both the fact and the 
truth. There is a difference. If I had known that I was out 
in the park this afternoon with another woman, I should never 
have gone there!” 

“Well, of all the nerve!” exclaimed Henry. “That’s the 
limit, Charley. She had on a dress! You couldn’t help 
knowing it was a woman!” 

“The liar!” exclaimed Clara. 


EXPOSED! Ill 

“He can’t think what to say,” declared Mrs. Strieker, giving 
her daughter’s waist an extra squeeze. 

“I should have known she was a woman, of course,” con¬ 
ceded Charley patiently. “But there, you see, was my weak¬ 
ness. I did not think she was a woman. I thought she was 
a goddess. Now please! Let me proceed, no matter how 
much I upset you. I am frank to say to this assembled 
gathering of my wife and her relatives that I am a most 
unfortunately married man. Clara and I are not suited. We 
should not live together at all, because we are violating 
decency in sleeping in the same bed when we don’t love each 
other. I tried to find some one else, and I thought I had. But 
I was not looking for another woman. I was looking for a 
dream girl, a creature out of my dreams. And I thought the 
lady of my afternoon adventure was that. I found, to my 
despair, that she was just what you have most aptly described 
her—just another woman! You are all unduly excited. The 
lady has gone out of my life. We shall not meet again. The 
experiment was a failure, you see. So why the consterna¬ 
tion?” 

“You red-haired wretch!” cried Mrs. Strieker. 

Charley laughed, and the sound of his laughter vibrated into 
Clara’s soul and set it off. 

“You laugh!” she shrieked. “You good-for-nothing hound, 
you laugh at me! Laugh at me, you dog, laugh at your wife, 
who slaves for you on her knees, doing all the work of this 
house with my own two hands, cleaning your floors, cooking 
your meals, washing your dirty clothes, going without every¬ 
thing, and all that, and you laugh at me, you dare to laugh at 
me, and go running around this town with some common 
woman, and you laugh at me, and you let her laugh at me, 
too, I guess, you good-for-nothing thing you; it’s a wonder 
God don’t strike you dead in your chair!” 

Her hands were tearing at her dress, the words fairly tum¬ 
bled from her mouth, and her eyes were glittering. 


112 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


“No!” replied Charley, not argumentatively. “I have never 
laughed at you, Clara. You are not amusing. You are 
distressing!” 

Clara leaped at him with outstretched fingers and clawed 
at his cheeks. He took her wrists and held her, squirming in 
his grasp. 

“Don’t you lay the weight of your little finger on my 
daughter!” said Mr. Strieker, stalking across the floor. 

“Well, you hold her then!” suggested Charley. 

Clara wrenched herself free, and retreated, panting, to her 
mother’s side. 

“Oh, my God!” she wailed. “Oh, my God!” 

“The neighbors will hear you,” Mr. Strieker warned, in a 
worried tone. 

“I don’t care who hears me!” howled Clara, louder than 
before. “I hope they do hear me! They ought to know what 
he is. Oh, my God!” 

Mr. Strieker turned appealingly to Charley. 

“Why don’t you go to her?” he pleaded. “Why don’t you 
ask her to forgive you? This thing can be straightened out. 
There never was a tangle that couldn’t be untangled. Go on, 
Charley, before she gets worse!” 

“But you made the tangle, Mr. Strieker,” said Charley 
respectfully. 

“Not I, my boy! You made the tangle by falling from the 
path of duty! I have only done my duty. And in this life 
God expects every man to do his duty!” 

“Then do your duty!” encouraged Charley. 

“My duty is to-” 

“Pardon me! Perhaps I can enlighten you. Your duty is 
to advise Clara to separate from such a black sheep as I. 
Mr. Strieker, try to be practical. I am entirely discontented 
with my wife, my job. I want a change. I have wanted to 
tell Clara that, but I pitied her so much, I couldn’t be cruel 
enough to tell her. You didn’t mind. Now that’s done, I can 



EXPOSED! 113 

only be grateful. Clara will get over this, and afterward she 
will be far happier. A divorce-” 

“Divorce!” repeated Mr. Strieker thunderously. 

“Divorce!” screamed Mrs. Strieker. 

“Oh, my God! Divorce!” wailed Clara. 

Henry sniffed again. 

“Look here, young man!” said Mr. Strieker, his tone deadly. 
“Do you wish to fasten disgrace upon my family? No one 
of us has ever gone through the scandal of a divorce court, 
and God helping us, no one of us ever will. It is the curse 
of this day that such a thing as divorce is permitted at all. 
Divorce is never right. God and the church are against it. 
‘Whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder!’ 
You are not a Christian, but praise be to God, from Whom all 
blessings flow, we are! We are under the banner of the Bap¬ 
tist church. We would never be able to hold up our heads 
again. Divorce! Never!” 

“You mean that you will keep me a prisoner in this mar¬ 
riage?” asked Charley, tense and torn at last. 

“I mean my daughter will never be a divorced woman!” 
thundered Mr. Strieker. 

“A divorced woman!” screamed Clara. “Oh, my God! I 
can’t stand that! I can’t stand it! Nothing can ever be the 
same again, now. It’s all over now! I can’t stand it. I 
won’t stand it. I’m going to kill myself, I tell you; I’m going 
to kill myself!” 

She sprang up toward the buffet, her hands rattling noisily 
among the knives in a drawer. 

“The family need not be alarmed,” said Charley. “We 
can’t cut bread with those knives, so Clara is perfectly safe 
in playing with them!” 

“Gee, what a brute!” cried Henry. 

“Clara, put down the knives,” said Charley. “You know 
you are play-acting now. You don’t want to kill yourself. 
Be reasonable for once. You know we can’t agree. I don’t 



114 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


love you, and you only imagine that you love me. There is no 
reason for you to commit suicide under the circumstances, 
really. Divorce is quite respectable these days—even Baptist 
ministers practice it!” 

“It is a wonder God doesn’t strike him dead,” said Mrs. 
Strieker. 

Clara glared at him, like a trapped animal. Then, with a 
rush, she ran across the room, out into the kitchen. They 
heard the fleet ascent of her feet up the back stairs, and the 
slam of the bathroom door. 

“What is she doing?” asked Mr. Strieker nervously. 

“There are some bichloride of mercury tablets in the medi¬ 
cine chest,” said Charley speculatively. 

The sound of Clara’s feet, racing down the back stairs was 
followed by her precipitous return into their company. 

“I am going to swallow these!” she announced fiercely, 
holding up a bottle of the deadly tablets. 

“Clara! Put that down!” shouted her father. 

“No, I won’t!” she screamed. “I’m going to swallow these 
unless Charley makes me stop!” 

“Charley! Make her stop at once!” thundered Mr. Strieker. 

Charley sat down. 

“I can’t do that!” he said. “That would be a compromise 
with my soul. It would mean something. It would mean that 
I was making it up with Clara, as you might phrase it. Well, 
I am resolved not to make it up with Clara. This time I am 
going through. I want to separate from Clara, and if I am 
the only one that can stop her from killing herself, she’s dead 
already!” 

A scream of horror came from Clara’s twitching lips. 

“You devil!” she shrieked. “I’d rather die!” 

Before any one could reach her, her hand was at her mouth. 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 


THE PROSPECT OF ADVENTURE 

“Stop her, Charley! Quick! Before your wife dies in front 
of your eyes! Charley!” 

Mr. Strieker was shouting. But Charley remained un¬ 
moved. Smilingly, and quite without contempt, he continued 
to look upon the frenzied face of his wife. 

With a sweeping gesture, Clara put the box of poison tab¬ 
lets on the dining room table. 

“No!” she cried throatily, oracularly. “No! I’m too good 
for you, Charley Turner. You’re not worthy of me. Why 
should I kill myself for a thing like you? No! No! Never! 
Never!” 

Whereupon she moaned piteously and awkwardly fainted in 
her mother’s arms. 

As they carried Clara to the couch of faded green imitation 
velour, she was a pale, disheveled and genuinely unconscious 
woman. Charley felt she had never appeared so homely 
before; so unfeminine, so graceless. Mr. Strieker unbut¬ 
toned Clara’s shoes, dropping a big tear on the broken tip of 
one. Mrs. Strieker unfastened her waist and chafed her neck 
and forehead with a damp towel which Henry had thought¬ 
fully obtained. 

Only Charley was useless and without a part to play in the 
ministrations. 

The state of Charley’s mind during the hubbub of restoring 
Clara back to her conscious life was uncontrite and uncom- 

115 


116 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


fortable. In him was a scorn of which he felt he ought to 
he ashamed. Under such circumstances, a man ordinarily 
would have been filled with pity and concern. Instead, his 
thoughts were busily stirring with other matters. He felt 
detached from the situation. And he felt this detachment was 
spiritually disgraceful. 

Yet it was curiously like him, too, to be gadding imagina¬ 
tively while his wife was in a faint. His mind insisted on 
holding a reception for a troop of grotesque fancies. At the 
moment, he was occupied with an odd and abstruse specula¬ 
tion. He was thinking about a duel. He pictured two men, 
garbed in the brown and stiffly formal fashion of the days 
immediately preceding the Civil War. Face to face he saw 
them; the polite preliminaries were gallantly performed; they 
leveled and aimed two old derringers. Instead of sighting at 
vulnerable spots in the anatomy of his antagonist, each duel- 
list pointed the muzzle of his weapon directly at the muzzle 
of his foeman’s pistol. The result, Charley fancied, would be 
inevitable. The two pistol balls would collide midway in air. 

Then what would happen? 

Here was a most interesting speculation. Would the balls 
flatten each other in their comet-like encounter? Would their 
momentum lift them upward, sidewise or downward? It 
beguiled his curiosity to wonder upon this problem. Upon 
such senseless themes his mind would turn invariably when 
his quarrels with Clara became no longer argument, but angry 
billingsgate. 

It was an hour before tranquillity had been restored to 
Clara. 

Meanwhile, Charley had uttered only a few words, but these 
had been sufficient to intensify the crisis in his domestic affairs. 

“It is time we talked common sense,” he said, with a pla¬ 
cating glance toward them all. “We should try to reach what 
might be termed a strictly Strieker understanding. You can 


THE PROSPECT OF ADVENTURE 117 

see that Clara is not satisfied. I have dawdled along, but now, 
at last, I am sure. The lady with whom I spent the after¬ 
noon made me sure. But I am not in love with the lady. I 
never expect to see her again. If it will ease your fears in any 
degree, let me assure you that our relations have been most 
chaste! 

“Hmpf!” said Henry Strieker. 

“I am sorry that the prospect of a divorce is so distasteful 
to your religious feelings,” continued Charley, unmindful of 
Henry’s bold skepticism. “It is a simple and practical device, 
which civilized man will ultimately employ quite as freely as 
now he adopts the insane expedient of marriage. However, I 
am resolved. If you will not give me a divorce, I shall go 
away, anyhow. I do not know what I am going to do. But 
this sort of thing is intolerable to me. I feel sure there is 
some real work in the world for me; something more to my 
liking than clerking in a brush factory.” 

Mr. Strieker cleared his throat indignantly. 

“You may be glad to come back to that old brush factory,” 
he said, a dark flush on his cheeks. “It’s an honest place, 
young man; the brushes are good brushes, and I’m not a 
profiteer.” 

“I understand,” said Charley easily. “You built it up from 
nothing, and now look at it. But I hardly think I shall return 
to brushes. At all events, by this time you should understand 
my feelings. A reconciliation with Clara is quite impossible. 
I don’t want to be reconciled. I don’t want to fool her, or 
fool myself, any longer. She may desire it. But she will get 
over that. I do not desire it. There is no other woman. 
There is no occasion for her heart to be broken. The other 
woman is gone. She has served her purpose. She has taught 
me to be strong. She has taught me to be true to my dreams 
and impulses and convictions and desires. That is all. I 
am going away. I shall continue to send Clara money when 
I am settled, and I hope you will not take it amiss if I say 


118 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


that I do not want to see Clara, or her mother, or her father, 
or Cissie, or Henry, or Cousin Elsie, ever again so long as I 
live—so please your God!” 

This outburst threw Clara into a renewed spasm of hysteria. 
Not until treated with aromatic spirits of ammonia, Florida 
water, and smelling salts was she calmed. 

Charley left the room in the midst of it, seeking solace in 
the little back room upstairs, where he attempted the extrica¬ 
tion of the Chopin funeral dirge out of his ocarino. 

Mr. Strieker’s mood was portentous. 

“I want to talk with you, Clara,” he announced. 

Upon the silent departure of Charley from the company, a 
singular and almost instant change was observed in Clara. 
Her hysteric ended abruptly. Her weeping and her sobbing 
were discarded. She became practical and serious. One 
might have concluded that her dramatics had been mere stage- 
play, designed to evoke pity in her husband. 

“There’s not going to be any divorce in this family,” pro¬ 
claimed Mr. Strieker, heavily. 

- “I guess there airCt /” agreed Mrs. Strieker. “Who God 
hath joined together, let nobody put asunder!” 

“That’s in the Bible,” Henry explained. “And besides, as 
pop always says, if you’ve made your bed, you’ve got to lay 
in it, that’s all!” 

“He can’t get a divorce if I don’t let him, can he?” asked 
Clara. 

“Indeed, he can’t. I just guess he can’t,” her father assured 
her comfortably. “So far as that is concerned, we’ve got 
him just where he ought to be. You’ve been a good, Christian 
wife to him, and he ought to be ashamed of himself, the way 
he carries on. But he can’t squirm. If he won’t support you, 
the laws in this state will put him in jail. But there’s more 
to it than just that. I am afraid of what he’s likely to do. 


THE PROSPECT OF ADVENTURE 119 


He’s erratic, Charley is. I’m afraid he’ll bring some kind of 
disgrace on us all.” 

“You never can tell what Charley will do,” intoned Clara 
drearily. 

“There’s something got to be done about it,” said Mr. 
Strieker. He tugged at his mustaches aggrievedly. “And 
something’s going to be done about it. I’ve got an idea 
already. I have never known the time when I needed an 
inspiration that one didn’t come. And one’s coming now!” 

He spread his red hands on his knees, and, leaning forward 
toward Clara, he said huskily: 

“I’ve got a plan in my mind that ain’t ready for hatching 
yet, Clara. I can’t tell you all about it yet. And I don’t 
w r ant to tell you anything, unless you promise me absolutely 
that you won’t breathe a word of it to him.” 

Clara sucked her teeth vindictively. 

“I’ll never tell him another thing so long as I live,” she 
promised vehemently. 

“Well,” continued Mr. Strieker, “I probably feel different 
than the rest of you about all this. I don’t condemn Charley. 
My mind don’t operate that way. I believe in psychology. 
It’s not what you do that matters; it’s why you do it, Clara. 
Now why is Charley behaving the way he is? That’s the 
question. I ask you, why is he? I tell you, I don’t think we 
ought to blame Charley so much as we do.” 

“You don’t!” cried Mrs. Strieker shrilly. “Why, John-” 

“Well, I blame him, pop,” said Henry virtuously, unroll¬ 
ing a strip of chewing gum. 

“Hmpf!” said Clara, with a cold glance at her father. 

“Well, now, I don’t,” persisted Mr. Strieker, stubbornly. 
“It looks bad for him. I realize that. But just the same, 
down in his heart I believe Charley is all right. I believe 
that every human being is all right, down underneath. 
Charley is a little foolish; that’s what’s the matter with him. 
If he had been running around with another woman, and 


120 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


that was all there was to it, why then I’d think different about 
it. Then I’d know he was a sinner, and I’d pray for his 
salvation. But there’s more to it than that, I tell you. 
There’s something deeper that you all haven’t seen. Do you 
realize that there stood a man, in this very room, watching 
his wife raise a killing dose of poison to her mouth and he 
never lifting a finger-” 

Mr. Strieker paused. Momentarily, the recollection of 
that appalling moment overcame him. 

“I’ve been studying Charley lately. I have come to a con¬ 
clusion about him. I don’t want to hurt your feeling about 
your own husband, Clara-” 

“Go on, pop!” 

“Gee, pop, go on!” 

“Go on, John, what is it?” 

“Well, I hate to say it, but I think he’s—well, queer. That’s 
what I think about Charley.” 

“You think he’s crazy?” gasped Clara, a shining gleam in 
her blood-shot eyes. 

“You think Charley is crazy?” repeated Mrs. Strieker, a 
distinct note of pleasure in her voice. 

“Bug-house? Loco? Dippy?” cried Henry, pleasantly 
aghast at this novel sensation. 

“I do think his mind is affected,” declared Mr. Strieker 
virtuously. “That is why I do not condemn him. I do not 
think he is responsible. Just think a minute. Is Charley 
like anybody in the world that we know? Doesn’t he act 
and talk different from anybody else? Doesn’t he say funny 
things?” 

“He certainly does,” said Clara, smiling. 

“I’ll say he does!” said Henry, grinning. 

“It is most unfortunate,” said Mrs. Strieker, coughing be¬ 
hind her hand. 

“I would not go so far as to say that the boy is dangerously 
insane,” warned Mr. Strieker, with a wave of his hand. “But 




THE PROSPECT OF ADVENTURE 121 

who can tell when an insane person is or is not dan¬ 
gerous?” 

“That’s just it,” said Henry. 

“And to think I never suspected it,” said Clara. “Poor 
hoy! I’ve been blaming him, when I should have pitied him. 
Of course, that’s it. That explains everything.” 

“Now, under such circumstances,” continued Mr. Strieker, 
“it is entirely proper that we should act. It is fortunate that 
I made this discovery. It may save the family from disgrace. 
There’s not only not going to be any divorce in this family— 
there’s not going to be any runaway husbands, neither. A 
husband whose mind is affected and who has to be put into an 
asylum may be a misfortune, but we can still hold up our 
heads. Do you understand?” 

From one to another they looked, startled into a thrilled 
quiet. An asylum! Charley in an asylum! Why, it was 
sensational! 

“Would you really do that?” asked Clara. 

“I think it is the only thing to do,” said her father gravely. 

“Of course it is,” said Henry. 

Clara made a helpless gesture with her hands. 

“Poor Charley!” she exclaimed, writhing her lips to pre¬ 
vent the full expression of a resolute smile. 

A little later Mr. Strieker went upstairs and interrupted 
Charley’s ocarino macabre to offer his hand, in token of 
reconciliation and father-in-lawful affection. Charley ac¬ 
cepted the hand patiently. 

“Now, Charley,” said Mr. Strieker, with a genial smile 
behind the bristles of his mustaches, “this all looks like a 
very sad affair. But I believe the sun already is shining. 
I’ve just had a little heart-to-heart talk with the folks down¬ 
stairs. They are beginning to see your viewpoint as well as 
their own. Of course, you know it was all a shock. We 
were all shocked. But I think the whole Strieker family is 


122 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


a broad-minded family, Charley. And broad-mindedness is 
next to patriotism, my boy. Now, none of us want to do 
anything in a hurry. You don’t want to do anything in a 
hurry, I know. More hurry, more flurry. So why not all 
of us be reasonable? You stay on here for the next few 
weeks, come to work as usual, and draw your salary on 
Saturday. Meanwhile think it all over and make up your 
mind. Decide just what you want to do. Then, if you do 
want to leave Clara, why we’ll all have to make the best of 
it. How about it?” 

Charley spun the ocarino on his thumb. 

“I shall not change my mind,” he said clearly. “But I do 
want to decide just what I shall do. So I suppose I am agree¬ 
able to your suggestion.” 

“Excellent!” said Mr. Strieker cheerfully. “Spoken like an 
American gentleman.” 

But Charley was suspicious. 

He was distrustful when Mr. Strieker went downstairs and 
had another long talk with Clara in the kitchen, with the 
door closed. 

He regarded the unwonted cheerfulness and tenderness of 
Clara as unnatural. 

He was mortally offended at the open friendship which 
was extended to him by Mrs. Strieker and her son Henry. 

He knew these people too well to feel comfortable in the 
presence of such unreasonable phenomena. 

When Charley was finally prevailed upon to return to the 
dining room, there was a general shaking of hands and wiping 
away of tears. In the meekest of moods, Clara assented to 
the arrangement that she and Charley were to be polite and 
kind to each other, without being husband and wife again. 

That, Charley knew, was not the real Clara. It did not 
take a logician to surmise that Mr. Strieker was guiding them 
in some connivance for his own purpose. But the object of so 


THE PROSPECT OF ADVENTURE 123 

palpable a fraud eluded him. Nor did he care especially to 
pursue it. 

His own plans, dimly apprehended, vaguely outlined, the 
prospect of some vast adventure, a majestic accomplishment, 
a splendid birth of dreams into realities, were too alluring 
to his meditations. It was easy to dismiss the Strickers and 
their schemes. 

At the front door he allowed himself the fleeting pleasure 
of appraising them. There they stood in his vestibule, on his 
blue-and-white checked linoleum, uttering their individual 
good-nights. Their business was finished and they were going 
home. Old Mrs. Strieker was gaunt and grim and angular 
and silent. Looming beside her in the shadow was her hus¬ 
band, portly, bushy, brushy, red-faced, loud-voiced, impor¬ 
tant. And with them, the joint product of their union, Henry 
Strieker; the expression of their nuptial passions. 

On the lowest of the white marble steps, glistening in the 
lamp light, John Strieker paused for the delivery of a parting 
original. 

“Good-night, Charley and Clara,” he said huskily. “Cheer 
up! The worst is yet to come. Ha! Ha! You mustn’t look 
so down in the mouth. Jonah came up, all right, you know. 
Ha! Ha! Well! Good-night again, and pleasant dreams!” 

Murmuring together, the three went off up the street. 
Charley slammed shut the door and bolted it. As he silently 
followed Clara through the hall and into the dining room, 
he was acutely aware of a blotch on the back of his wife’s 
neck. Its inflamed eruption remained with him as an irrita¬ 
tion, even when it was out of his actual vision. 

He decided that she looked blowzy and unkempt. 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 


HIS DREAM GIRL 

For the next few weeks, life went on outwardly as it had 
gone on before, but within Charley moved and dwelt in a 
spiritual storm. 

There had been, both in his home and in his office, an 
apparent forgetting of the great quarrel. Yet Charley could 
not be said to have been deceived. He knew there was astir 
around him something ominous. He sensed this subcon¬ 
sciously, yet such was his mood that he was not annoyed. 
Whatever it might be, he felt it must be unimportant. Be¬ 
neath the calm of his own external behavior there was an 
immense suspense which occupied him to the exclusion of 
pettier concerns. Charley was making up his mind. Or 
rather, his own heart was making him up. 

He was in grave perplexity. When he began to study 
himself, with the practical intention of leaving Clara and 
attempting a new method of living, he experienced an increas¬ 
ing distrust of himself. , He was afraid of the incoherence 
of his desires. 

First of all, he was not sure whether he wished to draw 
pictures or to compose music, or to play a musical instru¬ 
ment. He could not bring himself to any definite course of 
action. His desires persisted in remaining unorganized. 
He could not strip them for action. All sorts of doubts in¬ 
truded upon his resolve. He began to be obsessed with the 
assurance that his pose of superiority was without warrant 

124 


HIS DREAM GIRL 125 

in himself; that, even if he broke his bonds and made an 
earnest attempt, he never would amount to anything. 

He had a great desire to amount to something. And in his 
heart there was an insistent, prophetic counsel that he would 
amount to something; a promise at war with his doubt. Often 
he would draw pictures, hoping to create something beautiful, 
only to tear them up, in despair. Again he would try to hum 
an original melody; to fit the discordant emotions into coher¬ 
ent song, but always he failed. Failing to draw as he wished 
to draw, he thought if he could but make music of the pictures 
in his mind, he knew it would be good and beautiful music. 
Pictures! Pictures! They tormented him. Everything re¬ 
vealed itself unto him in pictures. Bright pictures in his 
eyes, picture sounds in his ears, fragrant pictures in his nos¬ 
trils. If he thought of the sea, there came to his nose the 
clean, brackish tang of the salt air; the sting of the spindrift 
on his lips, and the surging break of the waves upon gray and 
lonely stretches of sand. By such pictures he felt braced 
and invigorated; he wanted to communicate that exaltation 
to others—but he was impotent, inarticulate, and discouraged. 

Out of his impressions, he could create no single thing by 
which the beauty he himself experienced could be made mani¬ 
fest to others. 

Of the teeming quarters of his brain he was no longer 
master. His head was overrun with a swirling and inchoate 
panorama of colorful images. Sometimes he felt like a 
pygmy lost among the giants in the land of Brobdingnag. 

The swift pageant of unrelated shadows that passed before 
his mental vision left him startled and bewildered. A gray 
castle in the moonlight, its grim bastions and battlemented 
parapets and jutting bartizans overhung with the gauzy silver 
tracery of moonshine; next a swarthy brigand, swinging across 
his bulking shoulder a leather bandolier, stuffed with car¬ 
tridges; and then a crucifer in a crowded aisle of a vast cathe¬ 
dral, marching slowly in the rhythm of the intoning voices of 


126 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


the choir; a burnoosed Moor, his woolen cloak and hood 
touched with the pink splendor of the desert dawn. 

How to make drawings or music of all this? Or of the odd 
memories which were jumbled in the ragbag of his mind, 
mixed inextricably with such pictures. Now a desolate heap 
of ancient, sepulchral stones, a cromlech of the dolmens and 
menhirs of the druids, upon a bleak and deserted moor, be¬ 
hind which loose hills of sand stretched endlessly away. 
Obliterating such a fancy would come the memory of 
Schumann-Heink, in a gown of blue and silver, under the 
crown of her white hair, singing “My Heart Ever Faithful,” 
one rainy Thursday afternoon at Ford’s. 

Memories and phantasies would come trooping across the 
arena of his imagination, if he but allowed his lids to linger 
down over his eyes—a rabbi, in the priestly vestment of the 
ephod, raising his voice in prayer; Sarah Bernhardt, evoking 
cheers on the stage of the New Academy of Music in L’Aiglon; 
a mendicant friar, rapping his red knuckles against the green 
and bolted door of a monastery. Pictures! Pictures! 
Pictures! 

Often he would reflect upon the pictures he had seen in 
reproduction, wishing with all his heart that he might create 
greater masterpieces—fragile glories in oil, spread upon an¬ 
cient plaster, and many-paneled altar pieces. He longed to 
linger in foreign capitals and haunt the great galleries; to 
wander through the aisles and arches and lighted corridors 
of the Ufizzi, the Louvre, the Museum of Frederick the Great 
and the solemn Haarlem collection. 

Of these places he was well informed, because he had read 
intently of them, and had studied such reproductions as he 
could find in books. He had never seen the Walters collec¬ 
tion in his own city, because he was always at work when it 
was open to the public. All that Charley could look at were 
the Turner murals in the court house, and he admired them 


HIS DREAM GIRL 


127 


rather patronizingly, knowing there were so many better things 
that he had never seen. 

Incoherence! That was the trouble with his mind. And 
his soul. A constant and incoherent agitation; a great, throb¬ 
bing and altogether disorganized hunger for something he 
could not define. Like an invading carnival mob, the phan¬ 
toms flocked through the gateways of his mind, playful but 
unmanageable. How could a man play host to such dis¬ 
cordant fancies?—to the city’s land-locked harbor in the red 
blessing of a dying afternoon, with the schooners from the 
Eastern Shore tied to the wharves, or riding at anchor, theii 
furled canvases kissed by the mothering sun; how could he 
entertain flowers that he had seen in a shop-window on Eutaw 
Street, roses and hyacinths, yellow poppies and a bundle of 
violets in silver paper—and the moment after the blue mem¬ 
ory of a sea picture by Winslow Homer? 

There was no stopping the endless pictorial cavalcade. All 
the vast pageantry of history might intrude and erase the 
other visions; a long caravan trooping down the centuries; 
the hordes of Chaldeans and Persians, rushing through the 
brazen doors of Nineveh; Philip dying; Constantine in his 
chariot, beholding the writing in the clouds; Queen Marie de 
Medici in the house of her favorite Rubens; Webster, Clay 
and Calhoun in stern-visaged conference; Madame Recamier 
in the soft-stepped coilings of her shawl dance. Color and 
flash and flame came down with them; Charlemagne in Lom¬ 
bardy, and the black invasion that over-flung the armed might 
of Spain; the thunderous beat of the drum, the clash of steel 
spears on mail breast-plates; the paeans of victory and the 
shouts of despair. 

Especially he was attracted to certain colors. He loved 
particular combinations; orange-red with yellows, violet with 
yellow, violet with yellowish-green and violet with greenish- 
yellow, and scarlet and turquoise. He never tired of recall- 


128 BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

ing the young green, the turquoise trail, of the wake of a ship 
in the bay. 

And out of such vagrant abstractions as these his dreams 
might twist into an Elizabethan maid in braids, pensively 
playing upon the virginals. 

He had a soul definitely weird. He was possessed of 
dreams and fancies not only, but of spectral and beautiful 
impulses. The sight of certain women, arrogant in pride of 
beauty and position, inflamed him with wrath. His fingers 
then itched for a tweak of their scornful noses. And some 
he saw whom he wished to shame more cruelly; for whom 
the squeezing of a nose too far up-tilted would not suffice. 
These he would have ravaged brutally; and then he would 
have insisted that they look back into his eyes while he said 
to them, slowly and distinctly, “See what I have done to you. 
I have given you an humiliation. You drew aside your skirts 
when you passed a beggar woman with a brat sucking at her 
breast. You should not draw aside your skirt. You should 
have a brat sucking at your breast. Now go bathe.” 

Dream pictures! 

Of all his experiences, they were the most poignant, the 
most precious; those shifting and elusive dream pictures. 

Could he not organize them, harness them, do something 
with them? This was the question with which he taxed 
himself during those weeks of suspense. Constance had 
started him upon his journey, but she had given him no 
road-map. She had served him well, but not completely. 
However, he did not regret her. It was well they had stopped 
where they had. From Constance, Charley had learned to 
value his own future; to stop and consider; to take thought; 
to focus his meditations. In spite of his doubts, the deeper 
part of him believed more implicitly than ever in his sepa¬ 
rateness from the people he knew; in the integrity of his own 
destiny. There was something in him that told him he w T as 


HIS DREAM GIRL 129 

anointed, and while he laughed at his own egotism, he never¬ 
theless believed. 

He knew that he was different. He was a dreamer. He 
was an artist. The one predicated the other. In every dreamer 
there is the potential artist; one needs only the energy and 
the vehicle to make the dream visible to the rest of the world, 
and the miracle is accomplished. Charley had imagination, 
and it painted for him bright dreams. But he could not trans¬ 
late those dreams into an idiom which would make them in¬ 
telligible and admirable to the rest of the world. 

Beyond that, he was unable to go. It baffled him. Baffled 
in drawing he tried to make his pictures into music, but some¬ 
how the melodies would not come. 

At length he began to wonder if his separation from Con¬ 
stance was responsible. Could she have helped him now? 
Sensibly enough, he concluded that she could not. He was 
surprised at how quickly he had cut her out of his conscience; 
the memories of her that remained were detached and un¬ 
tinctured with regrets. He knew now that he had never loved 
Constance; he had merely been hungry for intellectual 
comradeship. 

Would he ever be able to love any one? 

With a twisted smile he assured himself that he certainly 
would not. His contention that there were no women left in 
the world worthy of being loved was at last a conviction. 
Venus was dead. Dead—dead—dead! 

All that was left was his dream girl. 

A warm elan gushed through him when he returned his 
eyes to the contemplation of the thought image of that ideal 
woman, which he had fashioned for himself out of loneliness 
and hopeless desire. 

What an altogether different creature she was from all the 
rest of women! There was no one like her; there could never 
be any one like her. In her there was something of everything 
beautiful. This gracious woman of his musings and his medi- 


130 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


tations was all woman—intensely and absolutely feminine. 
There was no possibility that she could speak one false word, 
commit a single gaucherie, to weaken the sure power of her 
instinctive femininity. 

Her body was exquisitely rounded, inclined toward slender¬ 
ness, but with full enticing breasts. A face langourously 
sweet, yet vitally alive. Hair of sunset red. She had a 
cleavingly sharp wit; real brains. She could talk with a 
fellow and understand what he talked about. 

And then he would smile at himself. Some girl, he would 
reflect. Too good to be true. But not for long could he 
mock at his fancy. He reverenced it too deeply for laughter. 
To him her face was as music, a symphony of sympathetic 
expression. He would imagine himself with her, under a 
scimitar moon in an orange grove, their murmurs unheard 
against the warbling of a nightingale. She was like an ouphe 
out of a garden, as he tenderly regarded her there; or again, 
as she danced away from him beguilingly, a pink-heeled 
maenad, romping under the stars, dancing him to seduction. 

Could she ever come true? 

What of it, then? 

Was she not better than an illicit liaison with an interior 
decorator from Massachusetts, who used a lipstick? 

Aye, better! For her voice was softer, sweeter, than the 
dulcimer, and her eyes bluer than the feathers of a peacock, 
and her lips redder than the flower of the clinging myrtle, 
and her breath sweeter than the honeysuckle, and her fresh¬ 
ness brighter than the morning glory. 

Aye, better, far, far better! 

But he was afraid that even the girl he fashioned in his 
dreams might not endure; he feared she would lose her way in 
the tangled maze of the dream-killing city; the web of newly 
paved and widened streets, where he lived and loved her. 
Slowly, even stupidly, he had come to understand that no 


HIS DREAM GIRL 131 

vendor of dreams was licensed to cadge his fancies in those 
modern highways. 

The city appalled him. Bah! It was a destroyer of dreams. 
Old Johns Hopkins! He had dreamed a dream. Now the 
city had made it into a red-brick reality of a hospital, with a 
carved figure of Christ sentinel at its portal, but a hospital 
for the rich and not for the poor. The dream had been a poor 
man’s hospital. The reality was a rich man’s hospital. 

The City of the Paint and Powder Club; the Monumental 
City, with marbles and bronzes to nobodies and neglected 
graves for the dreamers; the city of unending processions and 
parades, of special celebrations, Old Home Weeks, of decora¬ 
tions and illuminations, of conventions of Elks and Eagles 
and Moose, and whatnots among the human animals. 

Sometimes Charlie would stop and consider whether there 
was, within the boundaries of the town, one enlightened in¬ 
tellect. And he would remind himself that Dunken lived on 
Hollins Street. Dunken! He spat out the name valiantly. 
It was distasteful. Dunken gloried in the despoilation of 
sentiment and dream. Dunken’s heel was on the rose, and he 
flatulently denied that roses were beautiful or sweet smelling. 
Dunken had facts; he had figures; he had tabulations and 
statistics. He could juggle hard words expertly, unusual 
words and funny words; he made educated people gasp in 
admiration, and uneducated people reel with bewildered in¬ 
sult; he owned a magazine and in it he made a pose and a 
strut of disagreeing with all accepted things. Dunken could 
not create one beautiful image. Dunken had knowledge but 
no wisdom. Dunken got and got and got, but with all his 
getting, he had not got understanding. 

No! Not Dunken! Dunken was the true flower of the 
city’s thought; its proudest intellectual blossom, ornate of 
leaf, gorgeous of tint, admirable to gaze upon but without 
fragrance or loveliness, and prickly to the touch. 


132 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


What was he to do with his kaleidoscopic mind? 

Voices were telling him, in tones urgent and low, of a 
coming miracle. In dreams, night and day, he heard them. 
They whispered that the will and the wish would surely be 
accomplished. They spoke softly of a day to be when he 
should make manifest his dreams. To these voices he listened 
in reverent attention. He took them seriously. They were 
the only things left in life that he did take seriously. He 
believed in them. He believed that every prophet and every 
seer, Joseph and Daniel and Jesus, and the peasant girl in 
the fields of Domremy, had heard them. To Charley came 
the sure, unwavering vision; the promise, not of the world’s 
love, or its applause, but of something worthy brought out 
of himself, admirable for mankind, and fit to endure. 

He decided to dally a bit longer. He was content to wait 
upon the promise of inner voices. 

In his heart he would maintain a crypt, where the faith of 
such mystical fancies should not languish unto death. 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 


CLOTHES AND SEX AND GOD ALMIGHTY 

During the weeks that followed the quarrel at Charley’s 
house, Mr. John Strieker, the president of the Atlass Brush 
Company, was a very busy man. 

First he had consulted a lawyer. In the barrister’s dingy 
little office, near the Law Building, and almost within the cool 
shadow of the courthouse, he confided his problem. With 
his head thrust forward, and one finger on his right cheek 
bone, the lawyer had listened professionally. Afterward, he 
outlined to Mr. Strieker just the appropriate procedure. 
Forthwith went Mr. Strieker to consult three members of the 
medical profession, recommended by the lawyer. 

The three physicians had shaken their heads severally, upon 
hearing the evidence which Mr. Strieker adduced. 

Mr. Strieker considered their fees outrageous, but once he 
started upon an enterprise he was not the man to fall back. 
He paid Dr. Samuel B. Lorny, Dr. Holton Q. Wardleston and 
Dr. George Georgian, Third, the fees which they demanded. 

Whereupon Doctor Lorny, Doctor Wardleston and Doctor 
Georgian agreed to visit the home of Mr. and Mrs. Charley 
Turner, under the guise of casual acquaintances of Mr. 
Strieker, and there to observe whatever happened to be there 
to observe. 

The growing realization in Charley that it was his destiny 
to bring forth beauty, and that he could adopt no medium 
by which beauty might be brought forth, worked in his soul 
as a ferment and an anguish. 

133 


134 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


He became oppressed with the futility of his dreams; he 
ultimately became distrustful of his prompting voices; he was 
sensible of the ineffectuality of everything. 

He was sure that he should do something practical, draw, 
or compose, or play, but he could not make up his mind 
what to do. 

Was he, then, altogether hopeless? Would all his dreams 
eventually overcome him? Was his life to be nothing but a 
stagnant pool, incapable of reflecting the light of even one 
distant star? At the suspicion, his cheeks blanched. He 
must not bury his dreams in a napkin. Upon him was laid a 
responsibility, the duty of making manifest unto others the 
beauty he himself experienced. That was the obligation of 
the artist. 

Again he turned to his mental pictures, his inchoate dream 
visions, wondering now how he should go about picking the 
prettiest from among them and displaying them to his fel¬ 
lows. It was a ridiculous dilemma. If he but knew some 
process of transmutation by which he could divert them into 
harmonies of lines or sounds. He wanted to be a painter or 
a musician, yet secretly he shrank from reducing sky and sea 
to messy pigments, or the elusive glory of sweet tones in 
concord to thin black lines and idiotic cryptograms. Why 
was that, he wondered. Or did he shrink because his dreams 
were so inharmonious, garbled and jumbled and mixed up? 
At the very moment he put the question to himself, conflict¬ 
ing, unrelated fancies were flitting through the rafters of his 
brain. One moment he was contemplating a sky, haunted 
with the circling swoop of a red-tailed buzzard. Below were 
hummocks and dunes of yellow sand. That vanished. In its 
place he saw the lambent undulation of a torch of blue and 
red flames, carried down an aisle of gossiping trees by trou- 
vere and troubadour , making their way by command to the 
palace of a mediaeval duke. 

Here was neither pattern nor design, law nor order, purpose 


CLOTHES AND SEX AND GOD ALMIGHTY 135 


nor intent. A scarf of yellow brocade, and then a wide 
sweep of restless, slate-gray sea. Incoherence! What did a 
man do when he was incoherent? How was he to put to use 
a tangled profusion of color and shape and movement? 

Reveries clung to him like broken strands of cobweb; he 
was haunted by beautiful and terrible chimeras. And all the 
while he was possessed of the hot verve that begged for some 
release of his fanciful passions. In him was the warm fever 
to do and do and do. And he did not know what to do. 

He began to fear that he was losing his mind. 

Against this he had only that legendary faith for his com¬ 
fort; the faith and hope that had been with him from the 
beginning; the expectation that something would happen, that 
he would find himself. 

The conflict was long-drawn out and indecisive. There was 
always the fear that he might be playing with impractical 
nonsense. If he were to put any faith in himself, shouldn’t 
he be a practical fellow and harness his hopes? Until now, 
he had never known what he wanted from life; he had only 
known a profound dissatisfaction with life as he had lived 
it. Now life could be different. He could pull up stakes 
and do as he wished. Why not go at the thing in a practical 
way? Why not take a leaf out of Mr. Strieker’s notebook? 
Perhaps he could study art at the Maryland Institute, or 
music at the Peabody Conservatory. That was the way, no 
doubt. He could begin at the beginning. 

Money? Of course, he would have to have money. He 
would have to support Clara. And he would have to support 
himself and pay for the course as well. 

Well, he could get the money. If he really wanted any¬ 
thing, he would find out how to get it. If only he were 
sure- 

He would scourge his soul with brushes, if need be; he 
would work like a fiend in hell, if it were worth it; if his 
heart had to be curried with steel brushes, he could go the 



136 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

limit truly and well; he could become a strictly Strieker 
workman, and the price would not be too high. 

If he could be sure- 

He could not be sure. Not altogether sure. If what Mr. 
Strieker said were true—if all a man needed were to wake up, 
perhaps the old man was right. Perhaps Charley ought to 
wake up. He might wake up and show them all what would 
become of his dreams. 

He closed his eyes, ready to be thrilled at the prospect of 
such a sacrifice. But the thrill failed to reach him. 

Instead he seemed to hear the voices more loudly and filled 
with grave anxiety, warning him to beware. If the voices 
were the tongues of his own soul, they were troubled now in 
his behalf. 

He must not follow John Strieker’s way. He must wait 
until he had found his own way. There was no mistaking 
the voices. They warned him, as Constance had warned him, 
to be strong and to be himself. 

The insurgent call of his blood, the gush of rebellion in his 
veins, joyously answered the challenge. 

No! 

He would not go John Strieker’s road. He would wait until 
he had found his own road. 

Somehow the way would be made clear to him. He had the 
faith of the mystic, the egotist, and the fool. 

There came another Friday night, and Charley was once 
more barefoot and collarless in his upper room, devoutly 
playing his ocarino. In the front parlor sat Clara, entertain¬ 
ing four men—her father, Doctor Lorny, Doctor Wardleston 
and Doctor Georgian. 

In low tones they had all conversed for about half an hour. 
Finally, Mr. Strieker rose and said portentously: 

“I’ll go upstairs and get him for you.” 

Clara gazed after her father in apprehensive silence, as he 


CLOTHES AND SEX AND GOD ALMIGHTY 137 

mounted the stairs and tramped in upon Charley’s ocarino 
sonata. 

“Charley,” said Mr. Strieker with a friendly smile, and a 
reassuring tug at one of his walrus mustaches, “it isn’t often 
I ask you to do a favor for me, now, is it?” 

Charley grinned like a Chinese joss. 

“Now I am asking a favor of you this time,” conceded Mr. 
Strieker. “There are three men downstairs.” 

“Yes?” said Charley, with his head cocked to one side. 

“I want you to meet them,” cajoled Mr. Strieker. “It may 
be, you’ll be doing yourself a favor as well as me. But I 
know you’ll be doing me one, that’s certain. And bread cast 
upon the waters, you know, Charley.” 

“Why should I meet them?” asked Charley. 

“Well, now, look here, Charley,” explained Mr. Strieker. 
“I’ve been thinking a lot about you. You don’t like the 
brush business. But you might like it some day. If this 
turns out well, I know you’ll like it. These men are thinking 
of investing money in my business. They want to go into the 
export field with Strickly Strieker brushes. You know every¬ 
thing is export now, these days. And why not brushes? And 
if they do-” 

“And if they do?” repeated Charley tonelessly. 

“I’ll need to send somebody all over the world. And I’ve 
suggested you. And these gentlemen—well, they just want 
to get a look at you, that’s all. Ha! Ha!” 

Charley juggled his ocarino reflectively. 

“Something tells me you’re lying,” he said judiciously. 
“Are you?” 

“Why, now, Charley!” protested Mr. Strieker virtuously. 
“That’s not a nice thing to say to me. I’m offering you a 
chance to get in on the ground floor.” 

“Many a man has gone in on the ground floor and found 
that the elevator wasn’t running,” shouted Charley. “Is that 
an original, pop? Yes, son, that is an original. Gee, pop!” 



138 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


Mr. Strieker glared at him in furious indignation. 

“Are you going to refuse a little favor like that?” he 
asked. 

“No!” said Charley. “I’ll come down and be looked over 
for you, just as soon as I make myself presentable.” 

The looking over interview was a disaster. 

That is to say, it would have been a disaster so far as 
Charley’s hopes of being sent abroad as a brush salesman 
were concerned. In so far as the purpose of Mr. Strieker 
could be served, it was a magnificent exhibition. 

As soon as Charley had shaken hands with the three visi¬ 
tors, he was offended. They were too typical of the race of 
the commonplace not to outrage him. The names by which 
they were presented—Mr. Smedley, Mr. Brown and Mr. 
Hawkins—were annoying to his sensibilities. He did not like 
their benevolent attitude; their glances one to another, and 
the confident shaking of their heads at inappropriate moments. 

He decided that the only way to escape a most boresome 
hour was to shock them and get what amusement he could 
out of their tumult. 

They were talking of inanities, and noting his comments 
upon these inanities with a most disconcerting attention. 
When the conversation reached the point of the current 
styles in women’s dresses, Charley began. 

“I think clothes are immoral and disgusting,” he said 
quietly. 

“You think what?” shouted Mr. Strieker, at first appalled, 
and then gratified, as he cast a meaning look toward the 
three visitors. “Charley! You’re some joker, I’ll say. Ha! 
Ha! That’s a good one!” 

“But I don’t intend it as a joke,” protested Charlie, unper¬ 
turbed. “I am serious. Except for the purposes of climate, 
we should not wear clothes at all. By and by we would grow 
enough hair not to worry about the climate anyhow.” 


CLOTHES AND SEX AND GOD ALMIGHTY 139 

“Charley, please shut up!” said Clara. 

“Of course”—began Mr. Strieker, but Doctor Lorny inter¬ 
rupted. 

“Why do you think clothes immoral and disgusting?” he 
asked, chirping his words like a dozing parrot. 

“I think they are a mortal sin,” declared Charley. 

“A sin? It’s not a sin to wear clothes,” said Clara. 

“The image of God is a sacred thing,” insisted Charley. 
“Clothes conceal a sacred thing. It is a sin to conceal a 
sacred thing. It is immoral to do so.” 

“That is sacrilegious, Charley,” said Mr. Strieker in the 
tone of a man who thinks that even a lunatic can go too far. 

“No! It is highly religious,” insisted Charley blandly. 
“The fact is that man has grown to be ashamed of the image 
of God. I think it is a sin to be ashamed oF the image of 
God. I think we should be very proud to be created in the 
image of God and display the whole image on every con¬ 
ceivable occasion—a sort of permanent heavenly exhibit, you 
see.” 

“All of it?” gasped Mr. Strieker. 

“All!” said Charley solemnly. 

The three physicians glanced at one another, and one of 
them scribbled a note on a pad which he had concealed under 
the hat on his lap. 

“We all have dirty thoughts about the image of God, gen¬ 
tlemen,” continued Charley languidly. “At least, most of us 
do. Imagine having dirty thoughts about the image of God, 
gentlemen!” 

“I think we ought to change the conversation, or 1 shall 
leave the room,” said Clara. 

“Oh, this is just some of Charley’s foolishness,” said Mr. 
Strieker, with a solemn wink of the eye that was away from 
Charlie. 

“Don’t you believe in foolishness?” asked Charley. 


140 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


“A little nonsense now and then is relished by the best of 
men,” said Mr. Strieker stoutly. 

“But don’t you believe that folly begets wisdom?” per¬ 
sisted Charley. 

There was a puzzled silence. 

“Suppose there were no fools in the world? What would 
be the use of wisdom? It would lose caste. There would be 
no one to show off to. You would have no one before whom 
wisdom could be paraded. Then people would cast it aside, 
and everybody would be foolish and everybody would be 
happy.” 

“Oh, Charley, don’t be such a fool,” said Clara. 

“Ahem!” said Doctor Wardleston. “That is all very inter¬ 
esting, of course, Mr. Turner. Very interesting, of course. 
But wisdom means progress. It was wisdom that gave us all 
that makes us civilized. Not until man got wisdom did he 
discover marriage, for example.” 

Charley grinned at him in unholy delight. 

“I disagree with you,” he said. “I think marriage is a 
savage state, and married people are barbarians.” 

“Go on! Do go on!” purred Doctor Georgian, who was 
scribbling furiously under his hat. 

“It is just a foolish superstition,” continued Charley 
obligingly. “A vast barracoon, crammed with slaves, who, 
oddly enough, hug and kiss the iron bars which contain them. 
Marriage is a behemoth.” 

“A what?” asked Doctor Georgian, pausing in his 
scribbling. 

“A behemoth—the colossal old beast of the sea, rising out 
of the muddy ocean of tradition to claim its meal of human 
hearts. Don’t you understand, sirs? Marriage inevitably 
implies woman. And woman is a terrible invention. There 
is nothing more terrible. What is worse than a talkative 
woman? A silent one, of course. And that, Mr. Strieker,” 
he added gently, “is an original.” 


CLOTHES AND SEX AND GOD ALMIGHTY 141 

“It’s not very good,” was Mr. Strieker’s comment. “Frank¬ 
ness compels me to say it is not very good. There is no point 
to the remark at all. For a woman is either silent or talka¬ 
tive, ain’t she?” 

“Let’s not talk about marriage,” said Mr. Strieker, after 
noting that no one replied to his criticism. “Let us talk of 
purpose in life. That, to me, is important. A man without 
a purpose is like a ship without a rudder. What is success 
in life and how is it to be achieved? Now my idea about 
that-” 

“Yes,” said Charlie. “That is an excellent idea. But I 
think it lacks something. There must be something sexual in 
a man’s work before he can succeed.” 

“Sexual!” gasped Mr. Strieker. 

“Sexual!” chirped Doctor Wardleston. 

“Sexual!” grunted Doctor Lorny. 

“Sexual!” scribbled Doctor Georgian, under the hat. 

Clara arose, with offended dignity, and departed from the 
room. 

“My goodness, Charley!” pleaded Mr. Strieker in despair. 
“You have made it necessary for Clara to go out of this room. 
What is the matter with you, anyway?” 

“I am afraid you are misunderstanding me, as usual,” com¬ 
plained Charley cheerfully. “Let me show you what I mean. 
I look at life differently from you gentlemen. You pretend 
to understand it. I’m terribly puzzled about it, and most of 
the time I am amused. You see? I don’t understand any¬ 
thing or anybody, really. Do you understand what I mean?” 

“We understand,” said Doctor Lorny, soothingly, and he 
looked to his brethren for confirmation. They nodded. 

“Then I shall have to explain,” said Charley. “Life as you 
gentlemen live it is a shadow from which I instinctively recoil. 
I don’t know why, but I do. ... I love dreams. You hate 
them. No! I am sure that you hate dreams.” 


142 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


“I like nice dreams,” interrupted Mr. Strieker. “But I hate 
nightmares. Cabbage always gives me nightmares.” 

He looked mortally offended at the wicked smile which 
Charley bestowed upon him. 

“I mean to say,” he went on quietly, “that we look upon 
life from different viewpoints. But I believe, somehow, that 
the love a man bestows on his work is somehow like the love 
he bestows on his wife.” 

The four of them stared at him solemnly. 

“I mean it actually and physically,” said Charlie. “It’s a 
queer thing, but I never thought of it before. You gentle¬ 
men have stimulated me. I am getting enthusiastic over a dis¬ 
covery. I mean what I say actually, physically, sexually. 
It is a tremendous idea, gentlemen. I must tell you about it.” 

“Yes! Please do!” gasped Doctor Lorny. 

“Isn’t it true that the pleasure of a sex experience is ex¬ 
actly comparable to the pleasure an artist experiences when 
he paints a picture or writes a song?” 

“I never heard of an artist writing a song,” growled Mr. 
Strieker. 

“It is the spiritual transmutation of sex, I am sure,” argued 
Charley. He was beginning to forget his auditors; he was 
talking out loud to himself and enjoying it. “We all con¬ 
ceive in ecstasy and bring forth in agony. Can’t you see 
that? Sex, gentlemen, is at the root of everything in life—in 
the brush business as in everything else. A sculptor loves 
his clay as sexually as he loves his mistress.” 

“Whew!” exclaimed Doctor Wardleston. 

“Too bad,” muttered Mr. Strieker, with a glance at his 
visitors which said, in deepest melancholy. “Didn’t I tell you 
before you ever came up here? Now didn’t I?” 

Nothing could stop Charley now. He was following out an 
idea that promised, vaguely, to throw some light on his own 


CLOTHES AND SEX AND GOD ALMIGHTY 143 


problem. He went on, speaking brightly to them, but for¬ 
getting their presence in his enthusiasm. 

“Love is something more than the yearning of one human 
being for another,” he argued. “Love is an energy. It is a 
tireless energy, always creative; an energy that in an engineer 
can transform a desert into a garden; can rear monuments, 
write epics, and paint masterpieces. Love is a creative energy; 
the only creative. Why, it’s as plain as the wart on Mr. 
Strieker’s nose there. The trouble with all the failures in the 
world is that they do not know how to love. A man may love 
his wife and go into bankruptcy, but no man who truly loves 
his work ever fails. It is not enough to love wife, children, 
home, mother, country and the Lord God Almighty. The 
secret of success is the secret of loving your work. Possessed 
of a love like that—a sexual love for his work, I tell you—a 
man will find in his mind and in his body a flaming energy 
which no task can daunt, no obstacle out-face, no disaster 
obliterate. We have thought of love too long as a thing of 
man and woman and their child. It is nothing of the kind. 
It is God Himself in His richest garments.” 

“Charley!” roared Mr. Strieker. “Please!” 

But Charley was too pleased with his own eloquence to be 
halted by Mr. Strieker. 

“God is love and love is God,” he cried. “You all say you 
believe that. We recognize Him in the soft pressure of a 
woman’s hand, or the dear grace of a baby’s smile, but we 
overlook Him in the papers on our desks, in the whirr of the 
loom, the crash on the anvil and the roar of the factory wheels. 
For men who love that kind of work, that is love. Love is 
everywhere—in the pen and ink of the poet and the pigments 
of the painter. It is there, if we will look for it, and listen 
with a ready reverence. Why do you stare at me, when I tell 
you the truth? God is a deity of love, gentlemen, to be 
worshiped not alone in the nuptial chamber—ha! ha! I 
thought that would make you jump—but as well in the market 


144 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


place and the playground. Wherever men move and act and 
plan, love must be present; the high, glad love of the divine 
majesty that is inherent in the task itself. Men who achieve 
in the arts, in the professions, even in the trades, even in the 
brush business, love the thing they do with a fierce, hot, 
embracing passion. Nothing can keep them away from that 
thing. They love it, and success comes to them in the same 
measure in which they serve the thing they love.” 

He paused and took a deep breath. Surprise filled him, for 
he had enjoyed his utterance. He had forgotten to pose, in 
the earnest speaking of a new thought he had found. He 
guessed that it was an old thought, too, but he was proud 
that he himself had found it. 

The three gentlemen rose simultaneously, and Doctor Geor¬ 
gian put his paper in his pocket. 

“We must be going now,” said Doctor Lorny seriously. 
“We have been glad to meet you, Mr. Turner.” 

Charley laughed. 

“I’m sure of that,” he said. “Good night!” 

On the street corner, before he parted from his three hired 
physicians, John Strieker paused to hear their opinion. 

“Absolutely no doubt of it,” said Doctor Lorny. 

“I am afraid he is incurable,” said Doctor Wardleston. 
“At least we are justified in holding him for observation.” 

“I shall write an account of the case, from my notes,” said 
Doctor Georgian. 

“Thank you, gentlemen,” said Mr. Strieker. “Good night!” 

They went their several ways, under the golden cusp of a 
riding moon, cradled in a chariot of cloud. 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 


FOUR WISE MAD MEN 

On Monday of the following week Charley was called into 
the private office of Mr. Strieker. 

“Charley,” said Mr. Strieker, “I have a letter of the greatest 
importance to my business, to be delivered. It involves a 
loan which I need. How would you like to play messenger 
boy for me and deliver it to a man out in Pikesville? It will 
give you a nice, long, free car ride, and you will practically 
have the afternoon off from the brush business. You needn’t 
come back.” 

“Give me the letter,” said Charley. 

An hour and a half later he walked up the gravel path 
that led to a large, rambling, old-fashioned cottage with 
drawn blinds. He rang the doorbell, and was surprised at 
the quickness with which the door was opened. 

A stout, red-faced man, with a two days’ growth of beard 
on his chin and cheeks, thrust out his head and said: 

“Are you from Mr. Strieker?” 

Charley nodded, and the man stood aside. As Charley 
entered, the door was slammed shut and bolted, while Charley 
stood, staring at four familiar faces. Three were the visitors 
he had entertained a few nights before in his home. The 
fourth was Mr. Strieker himself. 

“Ha! Ha!” laughed Mr. Strieker nervously. “Beat you 
out here. Good joke, Charley. I came in a taxi.” 

“What for?” asked Charley. 

145 


146 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


There was a moment of uneasy silence. Finally, Mr. 
Strieker cleared his throat and said: 

“Charley, you might as well know the worst at once. You 
don’t know it, but you’re sick. You talk funny. Nobody 
else talks the way you do, or says the kind of things you say. 
You’re always talking about dreams. Now do you know 
what these gentlemen here are? They’re mind specialists. 
They examined you the other night. And you know what 
they say? They say you’re suffering from delusions of gran¬ 
deur. You’re always talking about the great things you’re 
going to do in the world. You’re going to be so much greater 
than all the rest of your family. That’s insanity, and this is 
an insane asylum, and you’ve been legally committed here for 
care and observation. 

“And we shall see,” concluded Mr. Strieker, unconsciously 
paraphrasing an ancient scripture, “and we shall see what 
will become of your dreams.” 

Charley blinked at his father-in-law. For the first time in 
a long while, he was jolted out of his favorite pose of debonair 
self-possession. 

“You have committed me to an insane asylum?” he cried 
hoarsely. 

“To a private sanitarium. A very nice one,” replied Mr. 
Strieker throatily. 

Charley shook his head abruptly; his mouth settled into a 
straight line; his face was white. 

“This,” he said crisply, “has all the aspects of a strictly 
Strieker original!” 

“Now, Charley,” protested Mr. Strieker, with self-evident 
patience, “I know you’re going to think hard of me—I know 
you’re going to think hard of us all—but we’re all of us, 
every one, agreed that this was the thing to do. Even your 
own mother agreed. And we none of us want you to think 
hard of us, Charley; not one!” 

“That’s generous!” 


FOUR WISE MAD MEN 


147 


“And besides, it may be for only a little while. You may 
not be here any time at all. You needn’t feel bad about it. 
Just a little rest, that’s all. The best medical brains of this 
city are agreed that you need a little mental rest, and that’s 
all there is to it, Charley. That’s all there is to it in this 
world, and we’ve acted all along in a strictly Christian 
spirit!” 

“Poor Jesus!” exclaimed Charley. “What a lot of rotten 
things He gets blamed for!” 

A shudder ran through the red-faced man, and through 
John Strieker, and through the three hired physicians. Their 
glances met in self-righteous confirmation. Was any further 
proof needed that a man such as this needed to be restrained? 

“Charley, this is Mr. Jaeger,” said Mr. Strieker briskly, 
as he waved his hand toward the red-faced man. “Mr. 
Jaeger ii the general superintendent of this place. These 
other gentlemen are all doctors connected with this institu¬ 
tion. I know that you and Mr. Jaeger are going to be great 
friends!” 

Mr. Jaeger put his head on one side and then nodded it 
reassuringly. Charley stared at him and shook his head. 

“No,” he said. “You’re mistaken. Mr. Jaeger and I won’t 
like each other, unless he is willing to keep himself shaved. 
In the meantime, I would a parting word with thee, friend 
father-in-law. You have played a typical strictly Strieker 
jest upon your confiding son-in-law. You know that I am 
not insane. You know that you are a damned liar and a 
thief, and a hypocrite in the bargain. I don’t have to tell 
you. But there is more that you should be told. I can get 
out of here. You have done a high-handed proceeding in 
bringing me here. A writ of habeas corpus could be secured, 
and I could demonstrate my sanity. That is what I should 
undoubtedly do. But a thought has just occurred to me. I 
don’t know that I shall act hastily. It depends on the kind of 
establishment our unshaven jaeger runs. Perhaps it may be 


148 BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

an ideal place to begin living away from your daughter, God 
bless her. At all events, friend father-in-law, good-day to 
you—we will meet again, elsewhere—mayhap on the gal¬ 
lows—who knows?” 

Charley was at last able to smile pleasantly as he made a 
courtly bow. Mr. Strieker and the three hired physicians 
looked at each other again, and shook hands silently with 
Jaeger, whereupon they departed, leaving Charley alone with 
his jailor. 

The hour was then about five in the afternoon. 

“Mr. Jaeger,” said Charley, immediately after the door was 
shut, “may I ask you a question?” 

“What is it?” barked Jaeger. 

“Do I have to see much of you while I stay here?” 

“Not if I see you first,” growled Jaeger. 

“You’ll pardon me, won’t you, then, if I ask that you take 
me somewhere where I belong, and where I won’t have to look 
at your bristles? They make me think of brushes!” 

“Aw, shut up,” said Jaeger. “All you nuts talk alike. It’s 
a good thing I know you’re crazy, or I’d knock your block 
off!” 

“Don’t you ever knock off the blocks of crazy people?” 
asked Charley innocently. 

“Not when they’re as crazy as you are,” answered Jaeger 
in a muttering grumble. 

“You win!” said Charley. “By God, you may need a shave, 
but just the same-” 

“C’mon!” shouted Jaeger. “You’re one of them talkative 
nuts, I see. Talkative nuts is the worst kind of nuts there is!” 

There was no further conversation. Mr. Jaeger conducted 
Charley up a broad staircase to a hall bedroom in the rear. 
It was on the south side of the second floor, and overlooked 
a pleasant enough yard through its one barred window. In 


FOUR WISE MAD MEN 


149 


the room there were an iron bed, enameled in cracked white, 
an upholstered easy chair of great age and decrepitude, a 
bureau, and an old-fashioned wash-stand, on which stood a 
large china bowl with green and purple flowers painted on 
it, an earthen pitcher, filled with water, and a soap dish. 

“Here’s your room,” said Jaeger, with menacing briefness. 
“Supper is served at six-thirty downstairs. Until then you 
can do anything you want to do!” 

“Anything?” asked Charley doubtfully. 

“Anything!” reiterated Jaeger impatiently. 

“You don’t mean I can do anything?” persisted Charley. 

“I do mean it, I tell you!” roared Jaeger. “It’s a part of 
the treatment for nuts to let ’em do what they likes, as long 
as they don’t run a pen-knife through their neck, or else 
something that would hurt ’em!” 

“And what about after supper?” 

“Just the same. Do anything!” 

“Well,” said Charley, with a boyish grin, “if that is the 
kind of insane asylum this is, maybe it isn’t so bad. You 
know, Jaeger, you can’t do anything you want outside of an 
asylum.” 

“Yes, I know that, too! Only nuts can do what they like. 
Sensible people ain’t allowed to, ” growled Jaeger, as if 
he were defending a sacred institution. “You’re a nut. It 
don’t matter what you do.” 

“Jaeger,” said Charley, “if you were shaved, I’ll be damned 
if I wouldn’t kiss you!” 

In the upholstered chair, Charley sat quietly, attempting 
to establish a mental calm. He expected the attempt to Jite 
useless. If he couldn’t be calm outside of a madhouse, how 
could he expect to be calm inside one? 

He was tingling with excitement. All his gay poise was 
mostly pose, and it could not withstand such a shock as this. 
Yet, even in his excitement, he did not find his emotions 


150 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


displeasurable. He was thrilled, and he always could find 
a compensation in a thrill. 

The situation was perfectly clear. He supposed he had 
been unjust to Mr. Strieker. Perhaps the old man actually 
believed him a bit touched. Certainly Clara believed it. 
And no doubt his mother, as well. That last quarrel with 
Clara had confirmed their suspicions. If he had tried to 
stop Clara from taking poison, things would have been dif¬ 
ferent. It was after that the three visitors were brought to 
the house. 

Of course! Charley smiled ruefully. He couldn’t be 
shrewd, ever. Too busy dreaming to be cunning and discern¬ 
ing. Another man might have known what to expect. Charley 
smiled at his own stupidity. He could imagine what the secret 
conventicle of his relatives must have been like. Mr. Strieker 
had said his own mother had concurred. It was likely. They 
could talk the old lady into almost anything, especially if 
they put it on a religious basis. There they all were, envis¬ 
ioned in his imagination. Somewhere in the weeks just past, 
they had come together, convoked to do something about poor 
Charley, whose mind wasn’t what it ought to be. Try as he 
would, Charley could not reflect upon it bitterly. Delusions 
of grandeur, the old man had said. Well, perhaps they were 
delusions. Certainly they were of grandeur. And whether 
they were or they weren’t, they were disturbing to the smug 
vanity of people who knew their place in life and didn’t try 
to get out of it. These dreams of high service, noble oppor¬ 
tunities bravely met, outraged his family. Charley must be 
mad. Charley could understand that attitude. He could even 
smile at it. What if they had, coldly and without compunc¬ 
tion, pilfered his liberty, in the manner of petty sneak thieves? 
What if they were insincere? Even if there was malice, and 
flouted vanity, in their conspirings and their complottings, 
what of it? 

They were a product of a place, a time and condition. If 


151 


FOUR WISE MAD MEN 

they had been, in spirit, other than that they had now shown 
themselves to be, there would have been less torment in 
Charley’s heart all these years; there would have been less 
occasion for such torment; his violent outbursts against the 
tyranny of the commonplace might never have been called up. 

As he mused upon these things, determining, meanwhile, 
to make up his mind slowly as to his future course of action, 
there came a rap at his door. 

A man in overalls, smelling of the earth, evidently a gar¬ 
dener, stood on the threshold with an envelope in one hand, 
while he scratched the tip of his nose with the other. 

“Letter for Mr. Turner,” he said, curtseying, without at all 
interrupting the scratching of his nose. 

Charley took the letter; noted that it was sealed, and that 
it was addressed to “Mr. Charles Turner” in a neatly turned 
script. 

“Who are you?” asked Charley. “And please don’t scratch 
your nose. You may get blood poisoning!” 

“My name is Piggies,” replied the fellow pleasantly enough. 
“I’m the man of all work in this bug-house. And it’s my own 
nose! ” 

“Piggies?” repeated Charley, shocked at such a name. 

“Yes, sir! Piggies,” returned the man of all work, in a 
tone closed to argument. 

“I wanted to be sure,” Charley explained. “Well, Piggies, 
I am glad to know that your name is Piggies. I would never 
have believed it, if you, yourself, had not admitted it.” 

“There’s an answer required,” hinted Piggies. 

Charley removed the letter, and carrying it to the open 
window, leaned against the iron bars as he read:— 

“Dear Mr. Turner: 

This is a letter of welcome. It is also a letter of 

explanation as to certain conditions which prevail among 

the inmates of this institution. 


152 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


There are two classes of inmates. One is the mob. 
The other is the intelligentsia. The mob is—the mob. 
And the intelligentsia is—the intelligentsia. 

Need we say more than that? 

For your own sake, we hope that we need not. For, 
most assuredly, we shall not. 

If it is your wish, you can identify yourself with the 
mob. In that case, ignore this letter, or write us, politely, 
or boorishly, as you may wish. In either case, we shall 
henceforth ignore you. The mob will welcome you. You 
can sit at their table, and have no cares. 

On the other hand, if you wish to sit at our board, 
if you would enter the charmed circle, you will have to 
prove your fitness. You will have to undergo an ex¬ 
amination at our hands. 

The four of us, who compose the intelligentsia, wel¬ 
come additions to our number. We await you in the 
library. If you come down with Piggies, we may pass 
you into our circle before dinner. 

In either case, salutations and welcome! 

(Signed) Ephraim Tuttle Tanneyday, M.D. 

Harold Blessings, One by One. 
Alonzo Leverton. 

D. D. D. 

P. S. If you think you are Napoleon, or that you have 
discovered perpetual motion, please disregard this invita¬ 
tion. 

P. P. S. If, however, you are Napoleon, or you have 
discovered perpetual motion, then by all means come 
down!” 

Charley went down. 

The library, in which the examination was conducted, was 
a room on the first floor; a chamber of built-in bookshelves, 
made of ancient lumber, with gaping holes in the rows of 
books, as if the shelves were so ancient they were shedding 
their teeth; with a long table, and pleasant lamps, and easy 
chairs, and an air of comfortable enlightenment. 


FOUR WISE MAD MEN 153 

On the advice of Piggies, Charley knocked gently on the 
door. It was opened promptly, and Charley stepped into the 
room. Four men were gathered stiffly together, in the center 
of the floor, regarding him critically. Then one stepped for¬ 
ward, bowed pleasantly, and said:— 

“I am the chairman. I am Doctor Tanneyday—M.D.” 

He was a short man, all curves and rounded outlines, agree¬ 
ably fed, by the looks of him. His white hair was thick, and 
bobbed after the fashion of male Russian dancers. Drooping 
from his thick, good-humored face were thick, white mus¬ 
taches, which had an air of insistent deprecation of his occa¬ 
sional lapses from dignity. 

As Charley bowed in silent acknowledgment, Doctor Tan¬ 
neyday continued:— 

“I want you to meet the other gentlemen who, with myself, 
compose our little circle. This is Mr. Blessings, One by One!” 

Charley shook the cold, moist hand of a thin little man, with 
a bald head and thoroughly restless hands. 

“Why,” said Charley, “do you add ‘One by One’ after your 
name? It may sound rude to ask, but-” 

“Quite right,” said Mr. Blessings, One by One, with a 
melancholy smile. “It is one of my fanciful little idiosyn¬ 
crasies. You see, when I was a little boy I went to Sunday 
school, as all good little boys must do in this town. And 
there we used to sing a hymn called “Count Your Blessings, 
Name Them One by One.’ And my name was Blessings. So 
the other little Sunday school boys called me Blessings, One 
by One. It hurt my feelings at the time. Then I forgot about 
it. But one morning, after I was a successful business man, 
and the father of seven children, I woke up certain that my 
name uxis Blessings, ‘One by One.’ And here I am. I can 
talk reasonably on every other subject except my name!” 

All this while, Doctor Tanneyday had been standing alter¬ 
nately on one foot and then the other, impatient at the 


154 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


melancholy recital. Now he seized Charley by the arm and 
led him away from the unhappy Mr. Blessings, One by One. 

“This next old party,” said the doctor, suddenly jovial, 
“is Mr. Alonzo Leverton; known among our circle as the man 
with a thousand faces!” 

“How many?” exclaimed Charley, aghast. 

“A thousand!” replied Doctor Tanneyday emphatically. 

“Is the one I am looking at one of the thousand?” asked 
Charley. 

“Exactly!” 

“Then, how do you do, Mr. Leverton?” Charley was shak¬ 
ing hands. “I do hope I shall recognize you when I see you 
again!” 

“I have a thousand faces because-” began Mr. Leverton, 

but Doctor Tanneyday interposed. 

“Later,” he remonstrated. “We must get on, dear Lever¬ 
ton. We really must get on, if you know—if we hope to get 
on at all, you know!” 

From Mr. Alonzo Leverton of the thousand faces Charley 
was next led to a tall and silent and handsome man. His 
cast of features was of a charm and beauty instantly appar¬ 
ent; his eyes were brown and serious and almost womanly. 
There was a sympathy in them which no one could miss. 

When he next spoke, Doctor Tanneyday unconsciously low¬ 
ered his voice: 

“And this is—D. D. D.” 

The man, thus mysteriously initialed, inclined his head with 
a courteous dignity, and without smiling. 

“I trust our grotesquerie will not offend Mr. Turner,” he 
said. His voice was musical and kind. 

“Not so,” protested Charley. “I find myself wondering 
what is coming next.” 

“Gentlemen, be seated!” proclaimed Doctor Tanneyday, 
somewhat pompously reasserting his chairmanship. When 


FOUR WISE MAD MEN 155 

all had taken places, the doctor leaned back comfortably and 
beamed upon Charley. 

“We are all very friendly to you, Mr. Turner,” he said. 
“But that must not mislead you. We must be critical in our 
examination. We are the intelligentsia in this sanitarium. 
Perhaps you consider us arrogant. You are entitled to con¬ 
sider us arrogant. You may as well know now as later that 
in this place you are entitled to any opinions that appeal to 
you, including that one. This is a free place. It is the only 
free place I ever heard of. Not one of us cares to leave. 
Escape would be comparatively easy. But why escape? Why 
escape from the absolute freedom of an intellectual paradise 
into the shackles of the world outside? This place is freer 
than an Athenian academy in the fifth century before Jesus. 
Only those worthy of such freedom are admitted into our 
circle. That is why we must examine you.” 

“I quite understand,” Charley assured them, feeling him¬ 
self reassured. “But before we go any further there is one 
thing I would like you to understand. I am not crazy!” 

A little murmur escaped them. They looked at each other. 
All, save D. D. D., smiled most amiably. Alonzo Leverton 
made a grimace, which Charley judged to be one of his 
repertoire of a thousand faces. 

“Ah!” said Doctor Tanneyday, rubbing his hands and nod¬ 
ding his head. 

“I was misunderstood by my wife and her relatives, and 
they tricked me in here,” added Charley earnestly. 

“Ah! Ah!” three of them exclaimed in chorus. All rubbed 
their hands and nodded their heads and smiled. D. D. D. 
gazed intently at the ceiling. 

“They expected me to be angry, but I find myself amused, 
and now, a bit hopeful,” concluded Charley, feeling embar¬ 
rassed. “I am not a lunatic. Perhaps—perhaps they are the 
lunatics!” 


156 BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

Even D. D. D. joined in the handclapping that followed 
this remark. 

“My dear Turner,” said Doctor Tanneyday, “you have the 
truth in your mouth with those words. Really you have. 
None of us here is a lunatic. The lunatics are outside. Of 
course, a few will creep in—the mob, you know. But not into 
this circle. We are all sane here, according to our private 
definitions of sanity. And after all, you know as well as 
I do that sanity or insanity may hinge upon varying stand¬ 
ards of common sense —nicht war?” 

The others nodded brightly in agreement, seeming rather 
proud of their chairman. 

“We spend our time here in philosophic disputation,” con¬ 
tinued Doctor Tanneyday, playing lovingly with his white 
mustaches. “If we may, we go into the soul of things. Ours 
is a mental and spiritual communion. You may well come 
to bless your wife and her relatives for tricking you, by the 
usual methods of medical connivance, into our company— 
if you do get into our company, Mr. Turner. In any case, 
I would advise you not to brood over the injustice. Was it 
not Herodotus who long ago asked, ‘Did justice ever deter 
any one from taking by force whatever he could?’ ” 

“No! It was not!” crowed Mr. Blessings, One by One, 
triumphantly. “It was Thucydides!” 

Doctor Tanneyday was red and abashed. To cover his con¬ 
fusion, he rose hastily and produced a box of cigars, which 
he first offered to Charley and then to all the others. When 
they were smoking comfortably, Doctor Tanneyday returned to 
the conduct of his examination. 

“We do ncJt’ask,” he explained carefully, “that a man be 
brilliant or clever. We are afraid of brilliance, and we do 
despise cleverness. We want only that a man shall have an 
unsealed mind, and what is figuratively called a soul. It is 
not necessary that a candidate talk like the little lines at the 
bottom of the pages in smart magazines. In fact, we would 


FOUR WISE MAD MEN 157 

rather he didn’t. The most violent outbreaks have been occa¬ 
sioned by such epigrams!” 

“A fellow had better beware of epigrams,” commented 
Charley. 

“Yes, a fellow had. One man came in here and said, during 
an examination, ‘God makes flowers and man makes auto¬ 
mobiles. Man has never yet made a violet and God has 
never made a flivver.’ We put him gently out. But another 
fellow said, ‘Widows get along, because they know all about 
men, and the only men, who know all about them are dead.’ 
We threw him out!” 

Charley smiled. 

“Well!” said Doctor Tanneyday. “You have been told 
enough about us for the present. It is your turn. Tell us 
everything you can about yourself!” 

In the presence of this singular quartet, Charley discovered, 
somewhat to his dismay, that his impudence was inaccessible. 
He could not get at it. It was reluctant to perform. These 
strangers somehow made him earnest. Ordinarily, he never 
could be earnest in the presence of others. He had to be 
impudent; it was a protective device. Only when he forgot 
himself could he be earnest, and then his usual reward was 
ridicule. 

Now, however, he found it impossible to be anything else 
but sincere. 

“My trouble,” he explained, “is that I don’t like the world 
as it is. I want it to be as I dream it to be. And yet I do 
not know what I want it to be. I hate the commonplace!” 

Alonzo Leverton made a significant face at D. D. D., who 
remained imperturbable. Doctor Tanneyday was watching 
Charley closely, and in this, he was imitated by Mr. Blessings, 
One by One. 

Charley was presently launched upon his story. He told 
it quietly and resolutely, and with a sense of relief. Paradox 


158 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


though it was, he knew that he was finding complete sym¬ 
pathy and understanding for the first time in his life. That 
sympathy and understanding was a light glowing in the eyes 
of madmen! 

They heard him with close attention, fixing their eyes upon 
his face as if they possessed a secret geomacy by which they 
could read his riddle. Soon Charley felt warmly encour¬ 
aged; their silent attention was full of kind assurance. At 
important points, their glances, one to the other, were sharp 
as rapiers. 

He spoke freely. He even managed to tell his story mer¬ 
rily at times; always good-humoredly, and never a whine 
in his voice to evoke the lethal alms of pity. As he pro¬ 
gressed, Charley emphasized not so much the people with 
whom he contended, as his inward revolt against the ugliness 
of his daily life. When he came to Constance, he described 
their relations easily, leading up to the why and the reason 
that they parted. 

“The lipstick? That did it?” gasped Leverton, making a 
particularly ghastly grimace. 

“It was only a symbol,” admitted Charley. 

“That was wonderful,” commented Mr. Blessings, One by 
One, approvingly. 

There was a chorus of approval. 

“And who, may I ask, was that blatant, noisy, blustering 
person who met you here and turned you over to Jaeger?” 

“That was the father of my wife,” explained Charley. 

“Ah-h-!” they all murmured. 

“I have never seen a male villain in all my life,” said 
Doctor Tanneyday abruptly. “I have seen female villains— 
plenty of them. Women are naturally villainous. But not 
men. They are always a mixture of good and bad. Now, Mr. 
Turner, I suppose you consider that father-in-law of yours a 



FOUR WISE MAD MEN 


159 


villain. He isn’t. I watched him, from behind the door, 
throughout the whole transaction. He wasn’t a hypocrite. 
That man thought he was doing a righteous act in putting 
you here.” 

He paused, and turned to Charley suddenly, anxiously. 

“Do my mustaches by any chance remind you of brushes?” 
he asked. 

“No! No! Not at all. You see—there are different kinds 
of whiskers. There are whiskers —and whiskers. I think it’s 
a case of different men, different whiskers!” 

At this, Doctor Tanneyday appeared greatly relieved, and 
he immediately proceeded with the examination. 

“Do you think you have any love left for your wife?” 

“No! Only pity!” 

“Ah! Pity!” 

It was D. D. D. speaking, and his voice was solemn. 

“Festering pity that remains when love is gone,” he added. 
“Pity is death!” 

“Do you pity her, now?" asked Mr. Blessings, One by One. 

“I don’t think I do,” replied Charley, after reflection. “I 
just don’t think about her at the moment. Perhaps later-” 

“That’s better! Do you love any woman at all?” 

“No!” 

The four inquisitors looked from one to another, as if the 
first disappointment of the interview had come. There was a 
minute of awkward silence. 

“May I ask why?” asked Doctor Tanneyday. 

“There is no woman left in the world worthy of the kind 
of love I have to give,” replied Charley fiercely. 

“How do you know that? Have you tried them all?” asked 
Doctor Tanneyday. 

“I have looked into their eyes—their faces—and I read 
their hearts.” 


160 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


An intense quiet followed this remark. The eyes of the 
four seemed to be searching his soul. At length, Doctor Tan- 
neyday said clearly:— 

“Do you not believe there is a necessity for love in the life 
of a man?” he asked. “The love of woman?” 

“Did Michael Angelo have a woman?” demanded Charley, 
suddenly truculent. 

Doctor Tanneyday stared at him. 

“Buennoerati was an invert,” he said slowly. “But if he 
had found the right woman, the Sistine Chapel would have 
been a nobler place!” 

He got up and still stared fixedly at Charley. The light in 
his eyes was now like the phosphorescent foxfires that glitter 
in the trunks of dead and rotting trees. 

“It was so with Da Vinci,” he said slowly. “Until he found 
La Jocunde . Somewhere Mona Lisa is smiling patiently as 
she waits for every artist—the woman with folded hands. And 
how her smile would redden, my young friend, if she knew 
that at this moment you were in a lunatic asylum!” 

He turned to his companions, 

“This foolish young intellectual,” he began—“We must 
talk about him. Shall we not?” 

They nodded without speaking. 

“Wait here, Mr. Turner,” said Doctor Tanneyday. “We 
shall not be long!” 

They filed slowly out of the room. 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 


THE IDEAL IS IN THYSELF 

It was half an hour before they returned. Meanwhile, Charley 
had been examining the book-cases. At the wealth of literary 
treasure stored on the shelves he was delighted, and it made 
him hope the four extraordinary inquisitors would decide to 
find him eligible. He knew the situation had in it an element 
of the comic, even of the burlesque. Nevertheless he was in 
a kind of Rome, and he wanted to be a patrician. 

Silently and soberly the four filed back, and stood in a row 
facing him. It was much like the return of a jury, after 
arriving at a verdict. 

Doctor Tanneyday pronounced it. 

“We have decided,” he said, without parley, “that you may 
become one of the intelligentsia.” 

Charley blushed happily. His impudence had altogether 
fled. He was unreasonably pleased. 

“Forty-two men have taken the examination and failed,” 
continued Doctor Tanneyday. “You are to be congratulated.” 

“I am-” began Charley, but Doctor Tanneyday waved his 

hand impatiently. 

“But we have more to say,” continued the Doctor, caressing 
his mustaches nervously. “We understand very little about 
you. There is a feeling among us that you may be what the 
world calls—a genius. Who can tell? You seem to wear its 
nervous spell, somehow. We are tempted to believe that you 
are a creative artist. Again, who can tell? The fact is the 
world always crucifies its saviors—if not by nailing them to 

161 


162 BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

trees, then by dropping them into pits, or locking them up in 
an asylum. You may be such a savior. Who can tell? 
But if you are, you have a long way to go. You have no art; 
you confess it to yourself. It is all locked up inside you. 
My young friend, we are going to give you a new name!” 

“A new name?” repeated Charley. 

“A new name. Peer Gynt. So far as we are concerned, 
you are no longer Charles Turner. You are Peer Gynt!” 

“But why?” asked Charley. 

“That will be told you in due time. We are direct here, 
Peer. We do not deal in subtleties. We want to help you 
find yourself. If you are a genius, we want a share in your 
triumph. If you are not, we want to help you to be happy. 
We have talked it over. Dinner is ready. Will you come— 
to our table?” 

Over the dinner table, Charley learned a great deal about 
his four friends. They were all good friends from that 
moment forward. There was a grave and punctilious cour¬ 
tesy among them, and an underlying tenderness new and 
strangely beautiful to Charley. 

The meal was served in a small room; he learned that 
the mob of ordinary lunatics were served in a large hall in 
the basement. There was practically no social contact be¬ 
tween the two elements, he was informed; it was only rarely 
that the intelligentsia ever saw the others. 

In the gay chatter across the plates, Charley learned some¬ 
thing of the history of the four men who had admitted him 
into their companionship. 

It appeared that Doctor Tanneyday was a specialist in 
throat diseases, who had married a dancer and later declined 
to divorce her. The lady had been—and still was—a bit 
masculine in her motivations, and had married the doctor 
purely for the sake of appearances. When he refused to let 


THE IDEAL IS IN THYSELF 


163 


her be free, she contrived to put him in a sanitarium. On 
what grounds she had put him there Charley did not learn. 

There was a vastly different story behind the incarceration 
of Alonzo Leverton, the man with a thousand faces. It was 
his propensity to contort his features, screw up his face, twid¬ 
dle his nose, writhe his lips, and otherwise disport and distort 
his features into unnumbered grotesques which made him a 
prisoner of this strange freedom. In repose, his face re¬ 
minded Charley of Pan disconsolate, mourning because his 
pipes were out of tune. There was a goat-like contour to his 
ears that helped the illusion. Over the salad, he confessed to 
Charley an ambition to sing the bandit’s serenade from the 
Jewels of the Madonna, and Charley promised to teach him 
to play it on the ocarino. 

“Do you mind telling me why you make your thousand 
faces?” asked Charley. 

“To shock people,” confessed Leverton casually. “Damn 
it, you can’t shock them any other way. They refused to be 
astonished, if you don’t. People are so cursedly immune to 
shock, and wonder and surprise. I got tired of their com¬ 
posure. I want to roll their eyes and purge their souls with 
amazement. At first I considered doing magic tricks—sleight- 
of-hand. But I am not clever enough to be a prestidigitateur. 
But, I said, I will surprise them, anyhow; I will do the last 
thing in the world they would expect a grown commission 
merchant to do. So I sat at my office window and made 
mouths and faces at everybody who passed down Light Street. 
And for that—for that, mind you—I’m here!” 

Charley smiled sympathetically. He wondered if the man 
were as mad as he made himself out to be. Had he not, him¬ 
self, felt often the irritation of sustained composure when 
his soul was rocking with the dizzy frenzy of wonder? 

The case of Mr. Harold Blessings, One by One, was even 
more astonishing. It seemed that he had been a student in 
Johns Hopkins University—a leader in his classes. He had 


164 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


but one vanity. This was his ability to tie a perfect four-in¬ 
hand knot in his cravat. His skill in this had been the de¬ 
spair of the young gallants who were his friends. One morn¬ 
ing, after years of success in business, he woke up bereft of 
his skill. If his life depended on it, he could not tie a four-in- 
hand knot. He was reduced to the degraded necessity of wear¬ 
ing ready-made bows. The shock unseated his reason. He 
brooded upon his lost triumphs, and finally had to be sent 
to the sanitarium. 

“I can teach you how to tie it again,” declared Charley. 
‘Til trade ties with you, right after dinner!” 

“Will you?” gasped Mr. Blessings, One by One, his eyes 
glittering. 

Mr. Leverton kicked Charley discreetly on the shins, and 
Charley said no more. Later, when Mr. Blessings, One by 
One, was talking with his neighbor, Leverton leaned over and 
whispered:— 

“Never let our poor friend get his hands on a cravat, my 
good Peer. Never! He will choke himself to death with it 
before you can stop him. Promise?” 

“Promise!” repeated Charley, feeling suddenly depressed. 

How seriously was he to take these strange people? 

And D. D. D.? 

There was nothing said of him. 

The initials remained a mystery with the rest of him. 
Often, during that first meal, his kind eyes were turned toward 
Charley; the beginnings of friendship were in their glances. 

But he remained a mystery. 

Toward the end of the meal, D. D. D. leaned over toward 
Charley and said:— 

“Peer, you will have to watch out. Or you may be nothing 
more than a mad-house Kaiser. Remember? And I think 
Carlyle wrote a line about you. Didn’t he say, 4 The ideal is 
in thyself; the impediment , too , is in thyself . Thy condition 


THE IDEAL IS IN THYSELF 165 

is but stuff thou art to shape that same ideal out of. What 
matters it, if such be this, or that?’ ” 

The phrase was a javelin to Charley, reaching to his heart, 
and spearing it deeply—yet he knew, not yet deeply enough. 

It was an odd time for Charley; a jumbled, happy, puzzled, 
and sometimes disappointing time. 

When the door closed upon his father-in-law that first after¬ 
noon, and he became definitely an inmate of Wildthorn Rest 
House, as the sanitarium was called, a sense of chained be¬ 
wilderment had overcome him. 

This was followed by excitement. The singular experiences 
which he encountered almost immediately afterward had in 
them a merciful compensation. They did not give his thoughts 
time to stagnate into the gloom of brooding. 

In the days that followed, he settled down to a routine. 
With his native abhorrence of compromise, Charley refused 
to attempt to delude himself. He was not content. Not, 
though the companionship of his four friends was, indeed, 
delightful. He missed something. It was his truant impu¬ 
dence. He could not be happy without it. 

Regarding his confinement, he was of two opinions. If, as 
his friends prophesied, he was to learn that his imprisonment 
was a blessing in disguise, he did not come to that point 
promptly. He resented being made captive by the Strickers. 
Often he reflected upon writs of habeas corpus and lawyers. 
But he had no money. Lawyers always demanded money. 
It angered Charley to realize that Mr. Strieker had known 
this, and had not taken his parting threat seriously. 

He was free of the Strickers and of Clara. That was a dis¬ 
tinct advantage. And he was also free of his mother. That 
was another advantage. Two weeks had passed under auspices 
undeniably agreeable. His soul welcomed such a period of 
dolce far niente pleasantly enough. Charley realized that his 
vanity, more than his actual incarceration, troubled him. 


166 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


There was a good library, and a second-hand Steinway on 
which D. D. D. played. There were long hours of spirited 
conversation, long hours of silent reverie, and then idleness, 
which was new and delightful. 

In this idleness, Charley made an intellectual discovery. 
Observation of his friends had taught him that they were— 
all of them—actually insane. On one subject, each of them 
was definitely mad. In every other subject, however, they 
were not only sane; they had brains of a surpassing quality. 
They were rich thinkers. His discovery was that only men of 
imagination could go mad. It was an indispensable qualifica¬ 
tion, apparently. He was forced to the conclusion that it was 
better to associate with mad men of imagination than with 
sane minds devoid of imagination. 

These philosophic and artistic four, into whose counsels he 
had been admitted, were, on longer acquaintance, surprisingly 
well. Through the remainder of the summer they fraternized 
happily. It was all very free. There were practically no 
restrictions upon them. The doctors called, now and then, 
asked questions, made notes, and went their way. The five 
intelligentsia, at least, were not required to do any work. 
The one prohibition was that they must not leave the grounds, 
a rule which no one had any desire to violate. 

Now and again, Charley got glimpses of the mob. They 
were a drab lot, admitted at a reduced rate; men and women 
with wild eyes, weepy eyes, red eyes, and grins and grunts 
and eerie laughs. 

On the second Sunday afternoon that he was there, Charley 
was told by Piggies that Clara and Mr. Strieker and Mrs. 
Strieker had called to see him, and were waiting downstaiis. 

“Piggies,” said Charley, “can you take a message?” 

“I can take anything,” replied Piggies bravely. 

“Then tell the party that I can’t come down—that I am 
spinning on my neck in the dance of the ding doodle,” replied 


THE IDEAL IS IN THYSELF 


167 


Charley. “Tell them that my symptoms are violent; that I 
am howling for a brush salad; that if I don’t get a brush 
salad, I will come down there and make a meal of Mr. 
Strieker’s whiskers. And tell them further that I am eating 
my fingers, joint by joint!” 

“It ain’t so!” said Piggies, with a catch in his voice. Pig¬ 
gies had come to have an affection for Charley. 

“That’s why I want you to tell them,” insisted Charley, and 
Piggies, with a puzzled air, departed with the message. 

Twice after that they had called again, but always Charley 
refused to see them. 

When painted autumn came, rouging with crimson her 
withered cheeks, the long conversations that had been held in 
rocking chairs on the lawn were transferred to the library, 
where there was a rough-brick fireplace, with logs and kin¬ 
dling wood. Jaeger himself built the fire for them. Jaeger 
was an odd character. He affected to roar at them, but in his 
heart he had a profound respect for the intelligentsia. It was 
the kind of respect a man has for a fine clock that won’t run 
any more. At the insistence of Charley, he had actually come 
to the point of a daily shave. 

As the season advanced, Charley discovered that there was 
an improvement in himself for which he was grateful. 

His impudence came back to him. 

He decided its disappearance had been due to the shock of 
his change of living. The meeting of sharp minds, coupled 
with his imprisonment, had struck him out of his gay in¬ 
souciance. But now his old pose was slowly returning, and 
with it, the old and beautiful incoherence. 

Of his son-in-law, John Strieker had frequently complained 
that he was a somnambulist. There were times now when 
Charley wondered if the old brush manufacturer were not 
right. He felt very much as does a man who lingers with a 


168 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


pleasant dream,—a sleeping that is always pleasantly unsatis¬ 
fying, which is the best of dreams. For naturally, Charley 
was not satisfied. Instead, the old urgencies to publish beauty 
to mankind were more insistent with the cold march of 
autumn. Until then, his impulses had been merely lulled. 
Now they were astir again. 

He felt an imminent sense of rebellion, and a break for 
action. All this had been pleasant, but it must not last too 
long. 

And he felt he would know when the time came. 

Often D. D. D. read aloud to them. He had a voice of 
quiet sympathy, the surest nuances of intonation and the most 
unerring discernment for emphasis in a phrase. Around him 
the four would sit in an interested silence, as he turned the 
pages of Gil Bias or Reigen , or perhaps something more 
droll. Their taste in literature was catholic; they were quite 
as willing to discuss Tarkington as Talleyrand. 

They played no games. They had a fine scorn for chess, 
and for the lesser absurdities of bridge and kindred contests. 
All were agreed that such diversions were for an inferior 
order of intellect, developing only memory and a certain low 
cunning. In their eternity there was no time for such 
trivialities. 

Of course, they quarreled. They would. There was, for 
instance, the sharpest disagreement among them as to the 
value of the work of Pablo Picasso and Andre Derain. Grad¬ 
ually, Charley came to understand that D. D. D. and Doctor 
Tanneyday were from New York City, and that both had trav¬ 
eled extensively. When an argument became too heated, 
D. D. D. would seat himself at the keyboard of the Steinway 
and play a nocturne of Chopin, or a shy and murmuring 
pastoral, or a gay waltz. Sometimes he would play an entire 
sonata through—the Appassionata was his favorite, and with 
it he could move their emotions superbly. 


THE IDEAL IS IN THYSELF 


169 


Manifestly it was a time of noble and splendid indolence. 
To Charley, it appeared at times as if life had stopped; as if 
all the ties of the past were sundered, and there was to be 
no difference in the future. Of that he was afraid, and yet 
there was a charm in its contemplation. A new diablerie was 
at work with his fancy; a conflict of mental conjuration; one 
part of him making beautiful pictures, the other snugly 
luxuriating in the joys of the present. 

Finally, he spoke to them of his difficulties, and they coun¬ 
seled him in the most friendly fashion. Acting upon their 
advice, he invested largely in patience. They made him see 
that he was young, and that he could afford to take glee¬ 
fully the mental vacation for which John Strieker and his 
brush business were paying. Never for a moment did they 
ask him to think of ending his days in a madhouse. Nor 
could they conceive of him returning to his wife and her 
relatives. 

Their word was wait. 

Oddly, though, his dreams were ugly,—of garments soaked 
in blood; of nude human figures, stealing shamefully through 
murky shadows, of gourmands and gluttons pawing disgrace¬ 
fully over plates piled too high with food. 

Hope and faith were in him still. He was waiting, as he 
he had been counseled to wait, serene in the feeling that the 
great adventure was still before him, somewhere behind the 
bend of the road. 


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 


SCANDAL 

At Charley’s house, events were moving most awkwardly. 

Mr. Strieker was profoundly disturbed. In putting Char¬ 
ley away, he had acted according to his most secure convic¬ 
tions. His principles were costing him money, which was a 
fair test of their quality. It was standing him seventy-five 
dollars a month to keep Charley in the asylum. Mr. Strieker 
was beginning to pause and think. Meanwhile, Clara was 
renting out rooms in her house, but this was not sufficient to 
support her, and her father had to give her money. 

The first roomer Clara had obtained was her sanctimonious 
insurance agent, Mr. Harris. He was sleeping in the room 
where Charley had formerly played the ocarino. Clara 
cooked his meals. 

It was Mr. Harris who occasioned the deepest perplexity in 
the bosom of Mr. Strieker. 

The more he observed how matters were going, the more 
Mr. Strieker felt that Clara should not see as much of the 
insurance agent as she undoubtedly did. During all that 
summer Mr. Harris took Clara out on car rides three nights 
a week. They rode together to Riverview Park, which Mr. 
Harris remembered when it was called Point Breeze; they rode 
down Fort Avenue, to Fort McHenry, and together on one 
Saturday afternoon, explored the labyrinth of the old star 
fortress, where the flag flew when Key wrote the Star-Spangled 
Banner; they went to Druid Hill Park, and Gwynn Oak, and 
on one never-to-be-forgotten Sunday they went all the way 

170 


SCANDAL 


171 


to Emory Grove, where a camp-meeting love feast of the 
Methodists was in progress. Also they went to church and 
to prayer meeting regularly. 

From the very beginning Mr. Strieker had found trouble 
with his conscience. There was always a bit of doubt linger¬ 
ing as to whether Charley really was crazy or not. Yet the 
doctors he hired had all said that he was. Mr. Strieker had 
argued with himself that there wouldn’t be much harm done 
to put Charley in the asylum for a little while, anyhow, and 
see how matters went. 

Now that there was an intimacy developing between Clara 
and her roomer—an intimacy that was becoming almost a 
liaison —Mr. Strieker took thought seriously. Perhaps if 
those doctors were hired again, they might find that Charley 
was cured. Then they could bring Charley home, and Mr. 
Harris would be handled. 

Mr. Strieker didn’t want any scandal in his family. 

So greatly did the matter agitate his mind that he went to 
Clara’s house one Sunday morning, after Sunday school, and 
gently hinted it would be a good thing if Mr. Harris were to 
give up his room and go elsewhere. 

Clara was instantly indignant. 

“I just guess not!” she blazed. “What do you think I 
am? You ought to be ashamed to sit there and talk like that 
to me. Day in and day out I’m trying to get along here, with 
a husband in the crazy asylum, and then I have to stand for 
a talk like this, as if I didn’t have enough to stand already. 
You must think I’m some kind of a child. I guess I’m a 
married woman, that’s what I am, old enough to run my own 
affairs. I’ll tend to my own affairs, pop, thank you, without 
any help from you!” 

In astonishment Mr. Strieker stared at his daughter. There 
was certainly a remarkable change in Clara. The taut weari¬ 
ness of her features was gone; there was a sparkle in her eyes, 


172 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


pink in her cheeks and lips, a roundness to her figure, long, 
long absent, and a fresh swing to her stride. 

Mr. Strieker went home, greatly puzzled and concerned. 

He did have a talk with Henry about it. 

Henry was even more indignant than was his father. Henry 
was keeping company with a girl, and he had definite ideas 
about the proprieties. But Henry laid it all to Charley. 
Henry thought it was a good thing Charley was put away 
when he was. Clara was acting the way she was because 
she had taken in some of Charley’s weird ideas on moralities. 
The good Lord only knew what she might have been doing, 
if she had stayed with Charley much longer. 

This was a new angle, and Mr. Strieker considered it 
gravely. But he could not assent to its correctness. Sensing 
opposition, he said nothing of his plans, but he contemplated 
bringing Charley home just as quickly as he could. 

What continued to trouble him was the cavalier manner in 
which Clara had received his advice. 

“If you want to know,” he said to his son ruefully, “what 
effect my advice has on Clara these days, just stick your 
finger in a pail of water and pull it out and look at the hole.” 

Henry grinned, in admiration of an undoubted original. 
But the grin awakened no response in Mr. Strieker’s heart. 
His corrugated brow was indicative of deep worry. 

“My son,” he said, “I hope you never desert your father. 
I’ve tried to make a comrade of you, my boy. Will you ever 
forget that ‘Father and Son’ dinner the church held two years 
ago? 1 think that occasion cemented a bond between us, son. 
Never forget the things I’ve taught you—that a pound of 
pluck is worth a ton of luck; that when a pusher enters the 
race, it is a safe bet that he will beat the knocker to the goal, 
and that the man who does no more than he is paid to do is 
never paid for anything more than he does!” 


SCANDAL 173 

“Gee, pop! I never can forget those originals,” Henry 
assured him. 

Throughout the family Charley continued to be the most 
interesting subject of conversation. Cissie, who was up in 
Pen Mar, had sent a postcard containing her photograph 
taken at High Rock, and had scribbled on the bottom, “What 
do you hear about Charley? Beware a silent husband and 
a dog that doesn’t bark!” Which wasn’t bad for Cissie, 
although it didn’t fit the circumstance. 

Of course, there had been much talk of the visits to Charley; 
the visits that had ended in not being visits because Charley 
refused to visit with them. It was odd that always Mr. 
Strieker and Clara went away with a sense of relief. Not one 
of the family had seen him since they put him in the Wild- 
thorn Rest House. 


CHAPTER NINETEEN 


THE GREAT CONSPIRACY 

Late in the autumn, Jaeger told Charley some disturbing 
news. 

“Say!” he called to Charley. “You ain’t such a nut as whut 
you was when you came here!” 

“I’m gratified,” Charley assured him with a flourish. 

“I mean you’re cured!” explained Jaeger, lowering his 
voice. 

“Cured of what?” 

“Of being batty, of course. They’re gonna take you home!” 

Charley stared at him without speaking. Jaeger grinned, 
rubbed his clean chin appreciatively, and went away growling 
and chuckling. 

Jaeger had no idea that his news was not of the most 
pleasant character. 

To the wise old lunatics who were his friends, Charley 
forthwith confided his problem. 

“My noble fellows,” he said grandiloquently, “there was 
once a popular song, the refrain of which ran: 

“Don’t take me home, 

Please don’t take me home! 

Tell me what did I do to you? 

Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!” 

Smiling around at them, and bowing after the fashion of a 
vaudeville artist, Charley continued: 

174 


THE GREAT CONSPIRACY 


175 


“A blatant and vulgar ditty, my masters! A stench in the 
nostrils, indeed! But truth was ever a stench in the nostrils 
of the world! And this is truth. By the warts and corns of 
the apostles, this is truth. They want to take me—home!” 

“You mean-” fluttered Alonzo Leverton, making a 

hideous face. 

“Yes!” said Charley. 

“Yes?” groaned Doctor Tanneyday. 

“Yes!” repeated Charley. 

There was a long silence, while Charley sat down, and 
looked at them. 

“What must be done about this?” asked Mr. Blessings, One 
by One, finally. 

“It is a dark and stormy night, gentlemen,” retorted 
Charley. “The wind howls and the sleet is hissing and siz¬ 
zling against the window. It is a night of all nights for a 
conspiracy. And we must have a conspiracy. For I warn 
you, gentlemen, I will not go back to brushes!” 

“He is wise not to go back to them,” commented Mr. Bless¬ 
ings, One by One, dully. 

It was D. D. D. who at length spoke sensibly. 

He held in his hand a copy of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. 

“Peer,” he said quietly, “it is odd that this should come to 
pass just now. For we have been talking about you. We 
have, in effect, been hatching a conspiracy for you. We have 
given a great deal of thought to you, when you knew nothing 
of our thoughts. And we have come to a conclusion about 
you. You have yet to find yourself—and we believe we are 
now ready to help you do that!” 

“I shall listen humbly and reverently,” said Charley. “It 
is true I haven’t found myself. I know that! I am all 
attention!” 

“You are the twentieth century grandson of Peer Gynt,” 
D. D. D. continued quietly. “He did not get into the mad¬ 
house until well after middle age. You are already here. 


176 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


They do things more quickly in the twentieth century. If 
you really understood yourself, Peter, you could make the 
most beautiful of your incoherent dreams assume a tangible 
form, and at length a reality! You could do that, if-” 

D. D. D. paused. 

“If what?” prompted Charley eagerly. It was so seldom 
that D. D. D. spoke. 

“You see, Peer,” said D. D. D., “we have all come to believe 
in you here. Implicitly. We believe you have genius, and 
that there are things for you to do with that genius, in a 
tawdry, impatient world. We want to help you. But we are 
afraid for you. We fear you will finish like Peer Gynt.” 

“I have never understood these eternal references to Peer 
Gynt,” returned Charley testily. “I read the play. I don’t 
see the connection!” 

“What was the one distinguishing characteristic about Peer 
Gynt that set him apart from all other people?” asked 
D. D. D., suddenly in deadly earnest. 

“His imagination,” returned Charley promptly. 

“Exactly. Precisely. But how many people have grasped 
that, as they read the play? That is the only important idea 
in the whole thing—that Peer Gynt had imagination, and the 
others had not. And that is the most important thing about 
you. You have imagination; the Strickers and Turners haven’t 
got it. Do you see?” 

Charley nodded thoughtfully. 

“I do see that,” he conceded. “The only important thing 
about any one is whether he has imagination or he hasn’t!” 

“Not at all!” protested D. D. D. with a slight show of 
warmth. “There are other qualities. And that is just what 
I want to talk to you about. You haven’t got them!” 

In surprise, Charley stared at him. The man’s soft eyes 
were kindled with a light that was an accusation. 

“I don’t understand!” 


THE GREAT CONSPIRACY 


177 


“You do not. Neither did Peer Gynt. But we must not 
go to the other matters until we have exhausted imagination. 
For you have a vivid and brilliant imagination. The question 
is now—what are you going to do with it?” 

Charley moved restlessly. 

“That is what I have been trying to find out for the last 
five years,” he said. “All that I can find in myself is a rag¬ 
bag of incoherence. And here I am in a lunatic asylum!” 

“You could have fared worse. Here you may find the key 
to all that the heart hopes for. It is largely bound up in 
your imagination—if you use it right!” 

“Sounds like Coue,” said Charley. “The imagination is 
superior to the will and all that.” 

“Your future is stirring now within the womb of your 
dreams, my Peer,” replied D. D. D. 

“How can a man organize his dreams?” demanded Charley. 
“All that I can do is to writhe in an incoherence of beauty 
and horror!” 

“It is now my time to speak,” said Doctor Tanneyday. 
“D. D. D. has told you that you possess the immense power of 
imagination. That can express itself in various ways—in the 
arts, or the sciences, or even the trades. With you it must be 
one of the arts. Yet you have no art. And you are no longer 
a child. The study of art should begin in childhood. Your 
problem is not an easy one!” 

“Do you believe it is too late for me to learn an art?” 
asked Charley. 

“No one can tell that. I, for one, do not think so. But 
that can only be proved. And after you have proved that, 
there is even a larger hurdle, which I am afraid you do not 
even suspect is there!” 

“What is that?” 

“Presently. In the meantime, I shall tell you something of 
our friend D. D. D. It will hurt him, but he has asked me 


178 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


to tell you—for it may save your immortal soul from perdi¬ 
tion. He tried to be an artist. A painter. He failed. Not 
until it was too late did he discover that he was following 
the wrong art. God intended him to be a musician!” 

D. D. D. covered his face with his hands. 

“There is a possibility,” continued Doctor Tanneyday, “that 
you might make the same mistake. You do not know whether 
to be a composer of music or a painter. I think the latter. 
We all do.” 

“But-” 

“The logic of it is simple. You see everything in pictures. 
By music you have always found it impossible to translate 
those pictures. Perhaps if you drew them, or painted 
them-” 

“I have sketched all my life—but no one ever noticed,” 
protested Charley. 

“That is a good argument for our theory,” said the doctor. 
“If you were a natural artist, you would always be drawing 
things. And who in your family would notice even a master¬ 
piece? We wonder if you would be willing to make the 
test? Up in his room, where D. D. D. has seldom let us 
come, there is a little studio. He has invited you into his 
room. Would you like to go up there now?” 

A crash of understanding was in Charley’s heart as he 
looked into the pale face and wet eyes of this mysterious 
D. D. D. Gratitude brought a catch into his voice, as he said: 

“I’d—I’d like very much to try!” 

D. D. D. took his hand as he stood up, and then they 
walked toward the door. As he was passing out of the room, 
Charley turned and cried out, suddenly: 

“And what was the last hurdle you said was waiting for 
me?” 

Doctor Tanneyday waved his hand gently. 

“At the very last you shall hear that!” he said. 


THE GREAT CONSPIRACY 


179 


It was a puzzling experiment. 

Charley knew almost nothing of the technique of drawing, 
but he drew vivid sketches. Of the way in which an artist 
sets to work to make a picture he was ignorant. He did not 
know how to hold a palette, to touch brush to pigment, or 
color to canvas. 

Yet in the serene little room which was D. D. D.’s, with the 
colorful sketches hung on the walls—and the portrait of a 
brown-haired girl with soft eyes, over the dresser—he found a 
new confidence in himself. 

There was something stimulating in the very mechanical 
work itself. It was as if a door had been opened in his head, 
through which some of his visions could get out. 

“You see,” D. D. D. told him patiently; “your trials are all 
before you. Most art teachers would tell you you are too old 
to begin. Your fingers are not at the formative period; there 
are any number of reasons why you shouldn’t try!” 

“But I’m going to try!” said Charley huskily. “I always 
wanted to draw and paint.” 

They were in the studio that first, cold night for more than 
two hours, and they brought good tidings to their waiting 
companions after their first lesson. 

“There is,” said D. D. D. judiciously, “a distinct and vivid 
evidence of talent. To make it amount to anything will mean 
almost unbelievably hard work; so hard as almost to terrify. 
But Peer says the price is all too little; he’ll do anything!” 

“But”— Charley was suddenly white with anxiety—“but 
how can I go on, when they want to take me home?” 

Doctor Tanneyday came up and laid his hand on Charley’s 
shoulder. 

“We have been talking of that,” he said. “Of course, 
D. D. D., with all the will in the world, cannot make you an 
artist. He can only begin your education. You should finish 
it in New York and abroad. Six months with him, and you 


180 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


will be ready for real study. After that—long years. You 
might be forty, fifty-” 

“If I have to work until I am a hundred years old, and then 
can paint one good picture, I shall be satisfied,” said Charley. 
“I don’t mean to be maudlin. But I’m damned grateful to 
you all! All this is a great surprise to me, you see. I never 
knew I wanted to paint so eagerly before!” 

“This matter can be arranged,” said Doctor Tanneyday. 
“We will have to bribe the doctors!” 

“Can you bribe a doctor?” asked Charley innocently. 

“Oh, yes—we have funds!” said Leverton proudly. “We 
will make them insist that Peer remain here six months longer. 
And after that-” 

“After that,” said D. D. D., his eyes strangely aglow, “the 
great conspiracy!” 


CHAPTER TWENTY 


A FLIGHT IN THE DARK 

The doubt which had shocked Charley, and which he had 
refrained from expressing, was sufficiently serious. 

Here he was, in a lunatic asylum, practically in the custody, 
and thoroughly under the mental domination of four of its 
inmates. Was he wise in submitting to their amiable dicta¬ 
tion? Were they not, perhaps, far madder than they ap¬ 
peared? Perhaps a sane art critic would say Charley was a 
hopeless fellow who could never paint a stroke. Perhaps he 
was wrong to abandon his old insolence, to yield himself as 
a young student in an academy of philosophic lunatics. 

He decided that he did not care. He was interested. bjis 
daily lessons in art were of entrancing appeal. And now, as 
they put books into his hand about the great metropolis of 
New York, a shadowy vision of the city became a permanent 
dream in his mind. This rocky island of Manhattan became 
a precious hope within him. He dreamed upon it as upon 
some fabled town in the Arabian Nights Entertainments. 

Some day he would journey there, and make his dreams 
come true. 

Indeed, he was beginning to be jubilant. He was inspired 
with new thrills. Utterly ignorant of the first principles of 
painting, faced with years, or perhaps decades of labor before 
success might be his, handicapped by his age, which gave him 
so late a start, and with no idea of where the money was to 

181 


182 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


come for his education, he nevertheless went singing through 
the days of the next six months. 

“I’m the first student who ever studied art in a lunatic 
asylum,” he would chuckle. He worked hard; feverishly, 
from early morning to late, and under the patient teaching 
of D. D. D. he made encouraging progress. He was learning 
the bare rudiments of an immense art, and from himself he 
was learning a marvelous new thing—the joy of doing what 
he loved best to do. 

It was almost perfect, that fall and winter. Once or twice, 
notably at Christmas, his relatives tried to see him, but he 
still consistently refused. They sent him Christmas presents; 
he was dumbfounded to find that Clara and Mr. Strieker both 
sent him technical books on art. Later he learned that Doctor 
Tanneyday, who seemed to have a magic of his own, in the 
affairs of the asylum, had written them what to send. 

Under the glow of such kindness he wrote a letter to Clara 
and one to Mr. Strieker, thanking them and wishing them well. 

To his dismay, he received immediate replies, both of which 
informed him that he was to come home within a few weeks. 

Thus again the conclave of the four wise old lunatics and 
their young protege was assembled. 

On the table lay the latest sketch which Charley had com¬ 
pleted. 

“Whenever there is anything kind to be said to you,” began 
Doctor Tanneyday, addressing Charley, “D. D. D. breaks his 
silence long enough to say it. But whenever there is anything 
disagreeable to be said to you, I’m elected!” 

“So this is going to be disagreeable!” commented Charley. 

“It’s about that final hurdle. We all are sure now that 
Nature intended you to be a painter. Whether you ever become 
one or not will depend on you. But we know—or we think 
we know—that you will never amount to much as a painter, 
unless something vital happens to you.” 


A FLIGHT IN THE DARK 


183 


“And that is-” 

“An emotional release. You are too damned intellectual. 
Everything comes to you through your brain. You’re cold, 
Peer. You don’t feel things!” 

“I feel beauty!” defended Charley. 

“You don’t feel beauty as you would feel it if you felt 
human emotions,” argued Doctor Tanneyday. “I am afraid, 
my poor Peer, you have got to suffer. You have got to know 
tenderness, and tears. Those are the pigments lacking from 
your palette. By and by you will have all the technique you 
need. But you will not be an artist until you have emotions. 
And you will have to know the greatest of emotions—love. 
And you must know the tragedy of death! Then—and I ain 
afraid not until then—will you express the genius that you 
undoubtedly have!” 

Charley grinned. 

“It sounds like a character analysis,” he said. “But I want 
to be sure what you mean. Do you mean that I shall have 
to fall in love?” 

They nodded solemnly. 

“And love brings in its trail all tragedy, and all the other 
emotions,” said Leverton, with a new face. 

“But I can’t!” cried Charley tragically. “There isn’t my 
kind of woman in the world. I want Venus. And Venus is 
dead—at the bottom of the sea!” 

“The day shall come when the sea gives up its dead,” said 
D. D. D. somberly. 

It appeared they had arranged everything,—except the love 
affair which he must find for himself. 

Charley knew this meeting was an occasion of solemnity, 
with something of the rending of human hearts beneath the 
surface. It appeared that they planned for him to make his 
escape one night within the coming week. Before that, how¬ 
ever, there was to come another parting. 


184 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


“I, too, have been called home,” said D. D. D. sadly. 

“Home?” repeated Charley, incredulous. Somehow, one 
thought of the asylum as definitely and finally the home 
of D. D. D. 

“I have been pronounced sane!” he said, lifting his brows 
singularly. “I am cured! Cured! My friends all— and espe¬ 
cially you, Peer—I wish you to remember that as a master¬ 
stroke of lunacy. I deceived them and made them think me 
sane. Truly I am mad! But I knew their tricks. There was 
a purpose behind my shoddy sleight-of-hand. It was shameful 
to play so ignoble a part. I wanted to show them just how 
mad I could be, did I care. But I dared not. Now I am 
free! Free for the one thing in life there is left for me to do! 
Remember always, my good Peer, that the best way is the 
madman’s way! And I shall go —that way!” 

Charley was puzzled. He turned to discover that the others 
had slipped off silently. He was alone in the room with 
D. D. D. 

“Peer,” said D. D. D. gravely, “you must believe always 
that I was insane. And you will not evade a madman’s 
whim?” 

Charley took his hand and pressed it. 

“I want your coat, Peer. I want some papers that were 
yours! I want—your ocarino!” said D. D. D. 

“You shall have them,” said Charley, aware of something 
vast and tragic which he could not touch or see. 

That night D. D. D. left, carrying with him the friendship 
of all who had known him. In his neat leather bag were 
packed Charley’s ocarino, his coat, and a few personal papers 
which D. D. D. had requested as a keepsake. 

The second parting, a few nights later, was an occasion of 
even greater solemnity. 

Charley could not fail to observe the subtle alteration in 
his three remaining friends; a change which had begun even 


185 


A FLIGHT IN THE DARK 

before D. D. D. had taken his bag and gone. They smiled no 
more, except a few wise and weary smiles that masked some¬ 
thing of more tragic solemnity, of deeper wisdom than they 
were willing to disclose. 

Now they were gathered, speaking in whispers, in the studio 
where D. D. D. had taught Charley the rudiments of his art. 
It was well after ten o’clock; the rest of the asylum inmates 
were sleeping, except Piggies, who was purchased for the 
conspiracy. 

Charley was taking with him nothing at all. He wanted 
to fare forth with only the clothes on his back, and these he 
wished speedily to exchange. He would begin his adventure 
in dreamland as a new man. 

It was of this that they began to speak. 

“We know,” said Doctor Tanneyday quietly, “that if you are 
to be left unmolested for the pursuit of your own soul, you 
must lose every shred of your old personality. Charley 
Turner must die. Otherwise your father-in-law will use all 
the machinery of the law to find you and drag you back. It 
is not an easy thing—but we have managed it!” 

Curious. All eyes averted. None to return the keen and 
questing glance of the man who was running off to dream¬ 
land. 

“They will believe that you are dead,” continued Doctor 
Tanneyday. “And that is well. We, ourselves, are only poor 
old lunatics, each with a separate and incurable delusion. 
Our chances at our dreams are dead. We had them, but we 
did not nourish them. Do not repeat our mistake, young 
Peer. You are sane, now. If you make a mistake, you may 
easily become as mad as we are. We sit here, and dream out 
our lives, content enough. But now is the time for us to drive 
you out. It is a sacred duty. We cannot escape it. We 
believe we are meeting that obligation—valiantly. We love 
you, Peer!” 

There was a full moment of silence. 


186 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


“We break our hearts. But the dreamer shall not perish in 
the pit. He may not evade his rescue; the caravan from 
Egypt comes!” 

And now they surprised him greatly. In his hands they 
placed five hundred dollars in old bills. Among them, they 
had been able, somehow, to accumulate it. It was an offering 
out of their love. Charley demurred. But they told him 
dollars were a part of dreams, and so he took it. 

“One word more!” said Doctor Tanneyday. “You came to 
us, a rebel, impatient of life as it was, eager for life as it 
might be. A dreamer, incoherent in his dreams! We gath¬ 
ered you to our hearts! Perhaps we tyrannized over your 
mind—but now you are free again. But you shall never be 
free of your responsibility! You have made a solemn con¬ 
tract! You must never forget that compromise with you is 
impossible—you must be faithful to your dreams—even unto 
death!” 

He clasped their hands without speaking. A knock came 
at the door. Piggies was waiting. It was time to go. 

“I shall write you!” he promised, huskily. “Under a new 
name I shall write you—Peter Gaunt!” 

“Good-by, Peer!” they said, in a whispered chorus, and he 
closed the door, to follow Piggies blindly down the staircase. 

And thus it was that Charley Turner crept off the grounds 
of the asylum, to the silver promise of the open road. The 
night winds murmured, and the young trees sighed, as he 
waved back at an upper window, where three strained faces, 
wet with tears, saw him depart. 

The coward moon was in hiding when he got off the car 
at the little railroad station which the Pennsylvania Rail¬ 
road considers adequate to the city. The sky was muddled 
with clouds and in the cool air was the damp promise of rain. 
Charley did not mind if it rained or snowed or blew. This 


A FLIGHT IN THE DARK 


187 


hegira in the night was too new and startling an experience, 
comparable to nothing previous in his hopes, and possessing 
the bright luster of an incogitable adventure. 

With a lordly air, he bought his railroad ticket. He did 
not buy a berth. In a vague way, he knew that people slept 
on trains, but only a dead man could sleep on such a night 
as this was, and was yet to be. 

In the dim-lighted day coach, he found a seat next to a 
window. The greasy faces of snoring Italian laborers flung 
in frightful attitudes of uncomfortable sleep did not injure 
his enthusiasm; instead he beheld a wild and frantic still 
horror upon them, and horror is the wildest cry of beauty. 

The long roar through the tunnel was a shout of victory 
in which his soul joined lustily; the swift rush out into the 
familiar reaches of Northeast Baltimore, the dark, drousing 
streets, with the pale tapers of the corner lamps, were 
possessed of new, dim thrills, studied through a car window 
and a blur of a deepening mist. 

Soon it began to rain; by the time they were in the open 
country, thundering over the Gunpower River, the downpour 
was steady. One could see only a little through a window. 
Charley lay back in his seat to admire the face of a lonely 
girl in the seat across the aisle, and then sat up to watch the 
glitter of the raindrops, beaded brightly on the windowpane. 
Against the engulfing darkness of the outer night he watched 
those glistening water-drops, as they were jolted across the 
glass by the train’s oscillation. They were like diamonds, 
alive and crawling. 

In everything he was able, in the high pleasure of his 
flight, to find beauty present and passionate. The lonely girl 
had smiled at him. Her smile was like the greeting of a 
Madonna. He must speak with her. 

There was a sudden, terrific jolt, and the train came to a 
grinding halt. Voices were soon shouting outside; many of 


188 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

the passengers got off into the rain to learn what had 
happened. 

But Charley dreamed on, careless of blatant realities. 

In the Sunpaper the next morning, the following item 
appeared near the bottom of the Baltimore County notes, 
sandwiched between a Halethorpe marriage and a Towson 
funeral: 


LUNATIC KILLED BY TRAIN 

Charles Turner, an inmate of the Wildthorn Asylum, 
was run over by the New York midnight express shortly 
before one o’clock this morning and instantly killed. 
Coroner Detcher gave a verdict of suicide. From the tes¬ 
timony of the engineer, who frantically blew his whistle, 
and slowed down his train, the man stepped deliberately 
in front of the train with the intention of ending his life. 
The body was so horribly mangled, that identification 
would have been impossible, but near the scene papers 
were found, in a coat which the man had removed before 
his tragic act, and these identified him. There was also 
found a small toy ocarino. At the home of the man’s 
relatives, it was stated that one of his delusions was that 
he was a great musician, and the ocarino a noble instru¬ 
ment. Turner is survived by his widow (Mrs. Clara 
Turner), his mother (Mrs. Laura Turner) and others. 
No arrangements have as yet been made for the funeral. 

Had the reporter known, he might have added to his 
obituary a new parable: 

Greater love hath no man than this; that he lay down his 
life for his friend, and not let his friend know about it . 


CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 


THE GIRL WITH THE RICH SMILE 

The red-stained wheels turned and turned, onward to the 
rocky island of dreams. Past the window of Charley’s seat 
in the day-coach, the rain and the darkness swept blindly. 
There was a whisper of exultation in the wet swish of the 
rain against the glass. There was the rhythm of jubilation 
in the turn and turn of the red-stained wheels. 

The girl across the aisle had smiled at him again. Her 
smile Was captivating. He gave her a full glance of appraisal. 
Her dress was cheap. But her smile was not cheap. How 
was that? A cheaply dressed girl should have a cheap smile. 
He wanted to smile back at her, but the splashed window was 
calling. 

Art and woman. He was between them again. A man must 
decide between them, ^he old lunatics were mistaken. He 
had suspected it for a long time. An artist was not concerned 
with love; he was snared in the mesh of the great intrigante, 
art. He would look out of the window, and forget the cheap 
girl with the rich smile. And he would think about himself. 

Life was like that. The window of art on one hand. The 
smile of a woman on the other. It was preposterous for 
his mad friends to assert that he must find love before he 
could express beauty. He should have told them that. Curi¬ 
ous ! How they had dominated him! He was not running off 
too soon; his soul would soon have been in vassalage to their 
ideas. 

He rested his burning cheek against the cold damp of the 
189 


41 


190 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


window. How throbbing with excitement he was! Until now 
he had not realized it. His blood was flowing with a buoyant 
exhilaration; he was sensible, too, of a relieved consciousness 
of release. Where was his gratitude? Those madmen had 
been kind—pompous old Doctor Tanneyday, and mouthing, 
grimacing Leverton, and gentle Blessings, One by One. And 
D. D. D. 

D. D. D. had gone home! Curious! One wondered where 
his home was! No doubt he was asleep now, somewhere, 
home! 

Charley leaned back, luxuriating in the swift rotation of the 
red-stained wheels that bore him onward to the island of 
dreams. 

What was it he wished to do? With a startled jump, Charley 
came back to his reflections. For a few, surprising moments 
he had abandoned them, while he gazed into the eyes of a 
woman, reflected in the glass of his window. Intrusive 
woman! Always envious of art! 

He frowned, and she settled back in her seat; the reflection 
of her, a softened reflection disrobed of cheapness, faded and 
vanished. 

He had been playing at cross purposes with himself. It 
seemed quite natural not to have known this before, and to 
know it clearly now. There was a fire in his brain that lighted 
up everything. He had wanted two things, and to achieve 
desire in this world, one must want only one thing and want 
it damnably. First he had wished to create, out of dead 
things, living things; out of cold, warmth; out of darkness, 
light. Beauty! The only word; the Lost Word! Beauty! 
Deliriously and feverishly he had wanted to create beauty. 
Already he had started to learn to paint; by and by he would 
know how to make manifest unto others the beauty he himself 
could see. 

There was desire enough to serve a lifetime. 


THE GIRL WITH THE RICH SMILE 191 


But he was a fool. He knew he was a fool, and he called 
himself that resentfully, as he pressed his cheek against the 
window. He was a huge fool, a very giant of a fool. Any 
man was a fool who sought an ideal woman. He had decided 
that long ago; didn’t he know that Venus was dead. Why, 
then, should he resurrect the cadaver of the old and buried 
riddle? 

The true artist was no such fool. He wouldn’t be a fool 
any longer. He had a new name; Peter Gaunt was his new 
name, and Peter Gaunt would seek for no ideal woman. Peter 
Gaunt would be a Greek, reincarnated out of the fifth century 
before Jesus. The Greeks were no bondsmen to their emo¬ 
tions. Their marbles were faultless, but cold. They were the 
true artists; they were no fools; they calmly chiseled their 
perfect women out of stone, and wasted no time in pursuit of 
the flesh that cannot endure. 

Art and love could not be mated. He saw that clearly. 
He had hungered for love. That had been a waste of time. 
Curious! How clear it seemed now. The lunatics were 
wrong. They had said he could not be a great artist until 
he had found a great love. Bah! He could see beauty in a 
blind world. That was gift enough! He would point out 
the beauty. That was what an artist was—a pointer-out. 

The girl across the aisle was crying. 

Why should a girl with a rich smile like that cry? It was 
an offense. The girl should be reproved and made to smile. 

Charley stared at her, his eyes full of pained rebuke. She 
was a little girl. About ninety-five pounds; certainly not 
more than a hundred. Red hair. The redness was real. Her 
face was nicely featured, a sloping oval, the violet eyes set 
wide apart. The lips were a surprise. They were curved 
treasures worthy of a harem, but they were smeared with a 
crimson paste. Those lips formed the girl’s singular smile. 


192 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


Her nose was lovely. Her perfume was atrocious. Her 
coat-suit of green serge was wrinkled and cheap. 

But why should she cry? Did no one else observe that a 
girl who could smile like that was crying? Charley glanced 
around the car. The Italian laborers snored and sweated; 
every one seemed asleep. 

“What’s the matter with you?” he demanded sharply. 

The girl put down her handkerchief, wet with tears and 
perfume, and looked at him, fully startled and insulted. He 
wondered if she meant to make a scene. Cheaply dressed 
women did make scenes. He smiled disarmingly. 

She caught her breath, and her smile came through the 
tears. The transformation was startling. Her smile was 
beyond capture or analysis; quick, elusive, and with some¬ 
thing elfen and rapturous in the swift movement of the arched 
lips. 

“Oh, nothing!” she said slowly. Her voice was sweet and 
musicaL 

“Then stop it!” said Charley. “It’s a nuisance!” 

It was getting colder in the car. Too cold to rest even a 
feverish cheek against the window-pane. The wash of the 
water against the glass was chilling to contemplate. After 
half an hour, Charley glanced again at the girl across the 
aisle. She had opened her hand-bag and was powdering her 
nose 

Powder-puffs! Lipsticks! Yes, she had a lipstick and was 
using it now! Bah! 

She turned and in her full gaze Charley saw that her violet 
eyes were still washed with tears. They were lovely eyes, but 
now a glitter shone in them. Once, maybe, they had been 
eyes as rich as her smile. Now they were violet eyes, fringed 
with mascara. 

“Well, of all the nerve!” she exclaimed, and Charley felt 
defeated. Such scornful amazement was devastating. As he 


THE GIRL WITH THE RICH SMILE 193 

returned to the cold window, he encountered her reflection and, 
to his astonishment, he saw that she was smiling again. 

He turned abruptly. 

“Why don’t you go to sleep?” he demanded. 

“Why don’t you?” she countered. 

“I can’t,” he found himself replying. 

“I can’t, either!” 

Then they looked at each other. Just as frankly as he was 
studying her, she was studying him. Evidently he was as 
different to her as she was to him. 

“Guess we’ll soon be getting into West Philadelphia,” she 
said earnestly, with a friendly bob of her head. Her turban 
was green. 

A wet-faced Italian, sprawling beside her, next to the win¬ 
dow, turned like a great beast, opened huge eyes and showed 
gleaming white teeth. 

“Shat ap and go to sleep!” he growled. 

“Shall I tear out his tongue?” asked Charley, with his old 
grin. She gave him a terrified glance, as if she really believed 
him. Then she got up and tiptoed across and sat down beside 
him. 

“Don’t you say another word,” she said, in an agitated 
whisper. “Never start a bum argument with a dago. They’re 
devils!” 

Again she bobbed her green turban in unassailable con¬ 
viction. 

*‘He’s snoring again,” said Charley, struggling with con¬ 
tending feelings. Now what was he to do? The cheaply 
dressed girl was sharing his seat with him. Art once more 
invaded by flesh. He sniffed at the perfume disagreeably. 

“It’s hell not to have the price of a sleeper, ain’t it?” she 
said, with a quick glance up at him. 

He nodded mechanically. 

“Was that why your pent-up feelings sought release?” he 
asked. 


194 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


“What?” 

“Was that why you were crying?” 

“Oh! . . . No!” 

The red-stained wheels were grinding on the rails; the train 
was slowing down into the long gray vaulted station of West 
Philadelphia. The girl opened her purse and her thin, w T hite 
fingers moved swiftly among coins and bills. She stopped, 
the purse still open, and stared calculating, at the ceiling of 
the coach. Decision came hardly into her violet eyes. She 
closed the purse with a snap. 

A fat boy in a white coat stormed through the door of the 
car. A basket of fruit and sandwiches was on his arm. 

“Let’s get something to eat,” suggested Charley. 

Her glance was shocking. For the first time in his life 
Charley saw a glance of leaping hunger, unashamed, stark. 

“How many can you eat?” he asked, as he beckoned the 
fat boy. 

She looked up at him, her expression beyond anything he 
had ever seen in his life. 

“Say, listen!” she said. “I know you’re hard up, too, or 
you wouldn’t be riding in a day-coach. But if you can afford 
to buy me a sandwich, I can eat it!” 

Charley grinned. 

“I can afford to buy the whole basket, and the boy, too,” 
he said. “How many can you eat?” 

“Six!” she gasped. 

“Fat boy!” said Charley. “Give this lady six sandwiches!” 

“What’s your name?” asked Charley, when she had finished 
the fourth sandwich, and had begun unwrapping the fifth. 

“Melodie.” 

“Melodie?” 

“Yes! This is good cheese!” 

“Who gave you that name?” 

She gave him a sharp glance. 


THE GIRL WITH THE RICH SMILE 195 


“You don’t think you can get personal so soon because you 
bought me some sandwiches, do you?” she asked. 

“You’re a very difficult person,” said Charley severely. 
“You cry, and you powder your nose, and you’re quarrel¬ 
some, and you wake up Italians who want to sleep!” 

She smiled at him then. 

“Now you’re just kidding,” she decided. “I guess you’ll 
be wanting to ask me my age next. Well, don’t you do it!” 

“I have never been guilty of the gaucherie of asking a 
woman’s age,” protested Charley virtuously. 

“You called me a lady in West Philadelphia,” she said. 
“What’s the matter—don’t I wear well?” 

“Melodie,” said Charley, “you disarm me. Your name 
enchants me. It is artificial, like most of the rest of you, and 
yet the man who bestowed it upon you was an artist!” 

She dropped her sandwich. 

“How in the name of God did you know that?” she gasped. 

“Know what?” 

“You know what! How did you know I worked for an 
artist?” 

“I didn’t know-” 

“You did! You just said so!” 

Charley was enlightened. 

“I just guessed it,” he said. “You are a model?” 

She kicked the sandwich with the toe of her slipper. 

“I guess you think that’s sinful,” she snapped. 

He laughed. 

“No! I don’t believe in sin!” 

She smiled at him once more, and reached for her last 
sandwich. 

“I guess you think you’re a regular devil,” she laughed. 

They did not speak again until she had finished her sand¬ 
wich. Charley gallantly procured her a paper cup of water. 
In continued silence, she again opened her purse, and busied 


196 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


her hands with lipstick and powder-puff, taking quick, anxious 
glances into a tiny mirror in the bag. 

“Thanks!” she breathed, as she closed up the purse and 
settled back in the seat. “They were sure good! . . . Say! 
You didn’t get any for yourself!” 

“I was not hungry. My body is seldom hungry!” 

“My God! You’re a lucky guy!” she declared emphati¬ 
cally. 

“Are you often hungry?” 

“I’ll say I am!” 

“Was that why you were crying?” 

“Say! Didn’t you ever see a woman cry before?” 

“Often!” snapped Charley, with a sudden, vivid memory 
of Clara, day in, and day out. 

“Well, then, what’s the matter with you? If it’ll do you 
any good, I’ll tell you my cry was all bucolic.” 

“Was all what, Melodie?” asked Charley, in an astonished 
gasp. 

“All bucolic!” 

“Where in the world did you learn that word?” 

“Oh, I heard an artist say it once. I’m a bucolic girl. 
You can’t make any more out of me. It’s been tried and it 
can’t be done!” 

“Melodie, you are-” 

“Bucolic! That’s me! You know, it is not fashionable to 
be bucolic in New York any more. It’s all right back home— 
but not up there. They laugh at you if you try to pull any 
of that stuff. You’ve got to be sophisticated. It’s all right 
to talk yourself to death about stuff nobody understands, but 
you’re a damned fool if you cry about the things you do 
understand. See?” 

“Bewildering Melodie!” 

“Say, are you trying to kid me?” 

“Cross my heart and hope to die! I used to say that when 
I was a little boy!” 


THE GIRL WITH THE RICH SMILE 197 

“And I used to say it when I was a kid, too!” 

Those violet eyes were not glittering now. Something else 
peered through. 

“Say!” 

Her thin, white hand tightened around his elbow, and her 
face, smeared with red and dappled with powder, looked as 
serious as a clown in a dressing tent. 

“I’m going to tell you why I was crying. It’ll do me good 
to tell—somebody!” 

He waited. 

“I ran off to New York with a press agent,” she said. “He 
came to Baltimore with a show. He promised to get me on 
the stage. That was what I wanted to do. Everybody laughed 
at that in Baltimore!” 

“They always do,” said Charley. 

“That man didn’t kid me,” she said, defensively. “He 
didn’t promise to marry me, or anything like that. He was on 
the level all the way through. I was old enough, and I was 
sick of making straw hats. So I just ran off with him—wrote 
a letter and told my mother just what was what. I’m not sorry 
now, either. I’m glad I tried. But I wasn’t good enough. 
The man I went with did everything a white man could do. 
I got try-outs everywhere. But I just wasn’t good enough. 
I’m still hoping for another chance this week, though. So 
I had to do something else—and I did!*’ 

“Where’s the man?” asked Charley. 

“He’s got the T. B. and he—well, he went out to Arizona. 
There is nothing that’s to be said against him, understand. He 
was a man! But I’m funny. I never forgot my mother. 
Up in the studios they used to laugh at me. At first they said 
I’d get over it. But I never did. She never let me do what 
I wanted, but I loved her, just the same. That’s the way it 
is—bucolic stuff. You think you can forget back home—but 
take it from me, you can’t!” 

“And so-” prompted Charley. 



198 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


“So one day I said to myself, I’ll go back home. I’ll just 
drop in on mother and see what she says. That was night 
before last. I had saved up about twenty-five adollars and 
I come down on the midnight. But say, mister—my God! 
I felt awful when I got to the old house. It’s out in Waverly. 
I stood at the corner of the road and just looked at it. The 
old fire pump where I used to play was still there. And the 
yellow roses were still growing over the front door. Mother 
loved those roses as if they were babies. And while I was 
looking, the door opened and she came out to get the bottle 
of milk. It was awful. She looked so bent and so old, and 
those old steel spectacles of hers was up on her forehead 
and—oh, say, it was awful!” 

“What did you do?” asked Charley. 

“I run! I couldn’t stand it! I just couldn’t!” 

“You didn’t see her at all?” 

She shook her head. 

“It’s funny, I know. It’s all mixed up. But somehow I 
knew it was better—for her—not to!” 

She began to cry again. She was frail and tired. Charley 
put his arm around her waist; her head came against his 
shoulder, and soon she had sobbed herself to sleep. 

The perfume was atrocious; the eyes of the conductor 
were a malignancy. Yet Charley did not stir. He held her, 
and thus holding her, looked through the window, beholding 
the miraculous coming of the morning. Its slow discovery 
was an experience never to be discounted. 

Until the last tick of eternity he would remember the 
warmth of the girl’s body at his side, and the fabulous un¬ 
folding of the fog that covered the outer world. Over all the 
landscape it seemed to cling, softly damp, spreading and 
deepening; a mystic mist from the ocean, gray child of the 
vanished rain. He loved it for its mystery, and the magic of 
its languorous power. Blear landscapes were blurred into 
enchanted wildernesses by the gossamer thaumaturgy of the 


THE GIRL WITH THE RICH SMILE 199 


brume. It was like a shroud, hiding from him not only the 
actual world, but the face of the future too; he could not tell 
whether the veiled face smiled or frowned. 

His arm ached from its long caress around the form of 
sleeping Melodie, but he did not stir. He was thrilled to be a 
witness of the magic of the fog, working its sway over the 
ugliness that man had accomplished. Silently, yet completely 
it was smoothing into airy shapes the rough bulks of factory 
buildings and concrete railroad bridges, and iron buttresses 
and stark, black metal poles. The blatancy of the billboards 
was obliterated by the great white enchanter, Fog! 

Upon the rushing panorama of the window there was an 
awesome sense of the lovely and the unreal. The mist was 
pearling the rusted rails with a milky glimmer and over the 
dull reds and faded yellows of stranded freight cars it spread 
a canopy of gossamer. 

Cold beauty and woman’s warmth! A mirthless paradox! 
By what should he assay his trembling ecstasy? Not a 
tremor of his delight would he willingly surrender. The 
snug nestling of that little body against his was no less dear, 
no less precious than the gray sorcery at play outside the 
window. His bright eyes were unwearied from the long 
vigil of the night; they grew wet with mist at the mere 
beholding of the phantomesque trees he passed, swaying with 
a wan and spectral dignity. 

Everything was beautiful. Here in this moment was the 
impossible marvel achieved. Art and woman were with him, 
and he was in a flame of happiness. Could the lunatics have 
been right, after all? Nothing at which he gazed was with¬ 
out a part of the hour’s benediction. The brown earth, up¬ 
turned in the plowed fields, blushed a purplish pink 
beneath the airy touches of the vaporous dawn. Through 
the haze, green meadows smiled gently. Then, as the iron 
caravan which bore them both swept on, he saw an asphalt 
road, glistening and shiny as the ebony mirror of a magician, 


200 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


breathed upon by the damp drift. The red-stained wheels turned 
and turned, forward and farther forward to the rocky island 
of dreams. 

Surely good must come from this. Surely his startled joy 
must be a prophecy of unbounded surprises to come. This 
morning fog was a high symbol, not to be misinterpreted. 
Its chastening ministry could not be ignored. 

Its very presence sang as a fine choir of the immutability 
of intangible things. It was a witness to his dreams. It was 
a rebuke upon realities. Those piles of wet, black railroad 
ties, and rusted-red spare rails, heaped on yellow stretches 
of sand, were like barbaric altars, wild and beautiful. 

At last, through the creamy veiling of the mist, a circle of 
pale fire came in, round as a metal platter, heated until it 
glowed. Before long, the sun was a flaming yellow circle 
in the empurpled sky, and its Midas touch made the world 
glitter brightly, and everything was plainly visible. 

With the fog, his mood passed. 

It departed hurriedly and silently, with only a few linger¬ 
ing traces of the unreal. At first the iron girders of bridges 
glistened with dark purple flushes, but all too quickly they 
turned a hard and silvery black in the clear morning 
sunshine. 

Melodie stirred restlessly. Her lips parted, not in a smile, 
but a gasp. She opened her eyes and stared at him. 

“My God!” she exclaimed. “Who are you, anyhow?” 

It was not necessary for him to explain. She remembered, 
and disengaged herself from his arm with a child-like em¬ 
barrassment. 

“I’ve got to wash up!” she said, and trudged swayingly 
down the aisle to where a sign announced “Women!” He 
turned crossly to the window. The train was rushing swiftly 


THE GIRL WITH THE RICH SMILE 201 


past the station platform of a small city. Charley had a 
fleeting look upon a little man, rolling a huge hand-truck, 
loaded high with green trunks. Behind him came a big man, 
pushing a little truck, containing but one trunk. 

The fog was altogether vanished. 

The world was waking up. Melodie came back, her face 
washed and refinished with generous powdering and rouging. 
She smiled at him beautifully. 

“Do you want to sit next to the window?” asked Charley. 

“No. I’ve seen it all before,” she replied. “We’ll be in 
pretty soon.” 

They passed a woman in a blue kimono, holding her laugh¬ 
ing baby up to the kitchen window to behold the hurling 
train. Then out into a stretch of open farmland, where a 
boy in a brown shirt and khaki trousers and a man in blue 
denims were toiling with long-handled rakes. Around them 
were patches of olive and emerald grass, between the rutted 
farm fields of purplish brown earth. No traces of the white 
glory remained. Soon they came into another town, full of 
cross-legged black chimneys with thin arms of pipe leaning 
grotesquely on the flat roofs of factories. Family wash 
flapped feebly in the breeze, between lines of jagged houses; 
flopping blue jumpers, red flannel shirts and sickly yellow 
drawers. 

On another station platform there was a green-slatted hand 
truck, with wheels pricked with peeling rust. Beside it stood 
the solitary figure of a bearded huckster. His hair was 
matted and dirty, and his basket was of filthy brown straw. 
It was heaped with unripe oranges of greenish gold, fat 
purple turnips and red and green cabbages wabbling at its 
edge. 

“Manhattan Transfer! Change here for downtown New 
York!” 


202 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


For half an hour, Charley had not spoken to Melodie, a 
silence she had accepted with complacent composure. Now 
he turned to her suddenly. 

“Is this where we get off?” he asked sharply. 

“Depends on where you’re going, old trooper. You change 
here for downtown. If you’re going into Pennsylvania sta¬ 
tion, you sit tight for ten minutes more!” 

Charley hesitated. 

“It doesn’t really matter,” he said absently. He was study¬ 
ing Melodie. The girl had smiled. A smile is an amazing 
and dangerous thing, even in a cheaply dressed girl, and 
most especially if it is a smile rich in charm, and mirth and 
the astonishments of the intangible. 

He should have turned away. She was cheaply dressed 
and—not vulgar. There was something in her that re¬ 
deemed her from vulgarity. Perhaps it was her smile. 

He was absurdly conscious of the fact that they were near¬ 
ing a parting. Obviously he wouldn’t, he couldn’t, get to 
know her. But he protested against such a sharp cleavage. 
She would smile and disappear into the mad dance of seven 
millions of human beings and he would never see her again 
—and she was the only one of the seven millions with whom 
he could claim acquaintance. 

“Don’t you know where you’re going?” she asked. 

“Yes! I am going to breakfast—with you!” he said 
suddenly. 

A shadow fled across her violet eyes. 

“No! That won’t do! That won’t do at all!" she said. 

“Why not?” 

Her face was serious, stripped of all smiling. 

“Uncle Alec expects me.” 

“But we can go to a restaurant.” 

“No! Can’t be done!” 

“Melodie! Why not?” 

“Can’t you see for yourself? You’re different. You’re 


THE GIRL WITH THE RICH SMILE 203 


like some men I’ve worked for—artists—only you’re differ¬ 
ent from them even!” 

“Strange little Melodie! Cheap and wise! There is some¬ 
thing different in you, too. I wonder what it is?” 

She smiled at him gratefully. 

“I guess that’s a compliment. But it’s hell to be different 
from everybody else. I oughtn’t to be bucolic, but I am!” 

They were nearing the tunnel. 

“Have you ever been to New York before?” she asked him 
suddenly. 

“No!” 

“Wait a minute!” 

She found a scrap of card in her pocket, and a little pencil. 
On this she wrote rapidly. 

“Here!” she said, thrusting the card into his hand. “This 
town is funny. You never can tell when you need a friend. 
I’ll never forget those sandwiches—and, old trooper, I’ll 
never forget you. I can’t eat your breakfast—but if you 
ever get up against it, come and see me!” 

The red-stained wheels turned and turned as the iron 
cavalcade of cars plunged into the tunnel beneath the waters. 
Charley breathed in of the strained air deeply. The journey 
was over. The task of the red-stained wheels was faithfully 
performed. 

Charley Turner stepped out to the platform alone, and 
exulting as a pilgrim who had come to the shining gates of 
the Temple that is called Beautiful. 


CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 


THE ROCKY ISLAND OF DREAMS 

There is a city that is built upon a rock. It is a winged 
monster of riven stone, crouching upon the shore of the sea. 
Its body is the body of a beast; its hands are a man’s hands, 
but the face and the heart are a woman’s, tender, capricious 
and cruel. 

None who pass that way escape her terrible inquisition. 
Her riddle awaits all travelers, and the time for the answer 
is short. If one be quick, her recompense is ready; the 
dangerous prize is her kiss. Upon your peril may you stam¬ 
mer and hesitate; her patience is intolerant and murderous. 

One must be quick! 

Where she crouches is the abiding place of the complex 
exhibitionitis; the capital of pretense; the garden of up¬ 
starts. Out of the rock, the thing starts up violently. Of 
brick and mortar, steel and concrete, its giant wings are 
fashioned. Out of its squalor and shame come its heroes 
and princes, upstarts all. 

Here are the streets of imposture; the highways of sham; 
the lighted avenues of make-believe. 

Yet here, too, are shining paths, trod by dreamers walking 
to the stars; and that is the sorry catch to the riddle of the 
young sphinx. 

There are men who love the creature as a bride. 

“I love her!” they sing. “I have taken her, yielding, into 
my arms, and I have found her sweet. She has brought me 
place and power and a rich dowry. I love her!” 

204 


THE ROCKY ISLAND OF DREAMS 205 


Those who thus sing boastfully are men who were quick 
and agile in their wooing. One must be quick! 

Others curse her as a harlot. 

“Damned bawd!” they shriek. “You tempted me! You 
made me a liar! You made me a thief! Worse than that, 
you made me a fool! You played me for a sucker!” 

These men were disciples of a very ancient fool, whose 
idol and whose image was a tortoise. One must be quick! 

Still others, with the daring encountered in despair, despise 
her. To despise New York is the unpardonable sin. Such 
men are like birds with broken wings, who know they shall 
never fly again. They drool and they drumble and croak: 

“Town of dead hopes! You strike silent singing lips; you 
blind glowing eyes; your cold finger stills the high beating 
of the heart of youth! Snide wonderland of the Wholly 
American Empire!” 

A thousand men have a thousand sayings about her; seven 
million men utter seven million sayings, and all are different 
sayings, and most are contradictions, and every word of it 
all is true. 

This is the mother of Main Street, and she giggles and 
sneers at her own child, blood and bone and flesh of her own 
peculiar blood and bone and flesh, and she giggles and sneers 
at her own child, because, God damn it, the child is de¬ 
formed ! 

“Quick!” she cries. “Quick! Quick! Quick!” 

One must be quick! Subway, elevated, taxicab—quick, 
quick, quick! Everything is quick or dead. 

“Be quick!” is the inexorable mandate of the monster. 
“If you would have my riddle, be quick! It’s worth it! So 
be quick! I am It! The Great American It! I’m a big It 
and a quick It! Back home they are slow and little. There’s 
nothing back home like me! I’m big and I’m quick! Be 


206 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


quick and you shall be big! Take a look at my sky-line! 
The Woolworth Building’s sixty stories high. And look how 
quick we built it! Fifth Avenue! And Broadway—dear old 
Broadway! Quick! Quick! Quick!” 

Quick walking! Quick eating! Quick sleeping! 

The poor man runs quickly up seven dark flights of stairs, 
to his room on the top of the tenement. The rich man rides 
up quickly to the fourteenth floor of his apartment house. 
Both must be quick. 

All in an hour here, virtue may be bartered for a career, 
and both parties to the bargain be cheated. Hungry rebels 
plot their revolutions which shall destroy the constitution 
and its amendments in twenty-four hours of bloodshed. 
While they plot, their masters talk in brittle and stacatto 
chanting of how labor must be taught its place, now, quickly, 
once and for all! 

If the children do not learn to be quick quickly, they die 
or are crippled by the quick trucks and pleasure cars that 
rush through the streets which are also playgrounds. If they 
do not get their lessons quickly, God help them all, for the 
schools are bulging, and new babies are born in seven months 
here. 

It is the first city of the Jews; nearly two million of them 
are slaving madly to get rich quick and live on Riverside 
Drive. They are a quick and agile people, and when the lips 
of the Sphinx shape and utter out her riddle, they do not 
stammer in their answer. 

For their wisdom came that way; throughout the ages they 
have known that the penalty for them of sloth and hesitation 
was death! 

It is the city that seduced the Hudson and violated her 
shores. Once she lay, trembling and virginal, knowing only 
the pure touches of the stars. Now she is the old bawd of 


THE ROCKY ISLAND OF DREAMS 207 

commerce, wearing as her jewels the yellow glitter of electric 
signs. 

It is a place of too much and too many. 

Too many quick men. Too many quick women. Too many 
quick children. Too many delicatessen stores, where wives 
can dish up a quick meal of canned soups, frankfurters and 
potato salad. Too many restaurants, and not one worthy of 
a gentleman’s appetite. Quick service! Quick check! Quick 
indigestion! 

Insensate, brutish faces, with thick lips muttering prayers, 
rush up and down its streets. Those hurrying faces that 
stream on north and south—faces powdered and rouged, or 
scarred and lined and wrinkled, laughing faces, crying faces, 
old faces, young faces, worried faces, drunken faces—all in 
a hurry! 

Morning they hurry to work. Noon they run to their 
greasy bundles of lunch, to the scurry of the cafeteria, the 
rattle of Childs, the hub-bub of the hunting room at the 
Astor; to better eating rooms and to worse, but to one and 
to all they hurry. 

Evening they hurry to be gay, and to be gay one must be 
wicked, and they will not linger to be wicked and so they 
are merely vulgar. 

The tantara and fanfaronade of its revelry is blown in 
march time on a penny horn. In its midnight cabarets the 
people dance, not seductively as the old courtesans, but 
jumpily, jerkily, jazzily. They are sodden with wines which 
Nero’s stablemen would have emptied to the swine, brewed 
over night and a stench in the nostrils of amiable Bacchus. 

They want the grand gesture of Paris and Vienna, but they 
are too much in a hurry to learn; they know nothing better, 
therefore, than thumbing the nose! 

“I am bad and I am glad I am bad!” cries the city. “Hurry 


208 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


up! Let’s raise hell! This is synthetic stuff but it’s good! 
Baal! Baal! Baal! Baal is our idol! The god of pleasure is 
our God!” 

But the idol came from the ten cent store. It is a cheap 
clay Billikin, and it laughs. A middle class Greek of the 
fifth century before Jesus would have lifted his brows, drawn 
closer his tunic and passed on. 

One must be quick! 

Into this power house of quick energy came Charley Turner, 
the man who dreamed; Charley Turner, who had changed his 
name to Peter Gaunt; Charley, who believed that Manhattan 
Island was a refuge, an asylum for the knighthood of vision¬ 
aries. A Joseph, carried into Egypt on a caravan of red- 
stained wheels. 

What was to become of him there? 

As he mounted the steps from the platform, he was quick 
to observe a change. The passengers swarmed and eddied 
past him quickly; men who had lounged and sprawled in the 
cars were now possessed of a quick impatience, and hurried 
upward, as if bent on immediate business. The shuffle of 
swift feet was about him; the sound of swift, stacatto con¬ 
versation was in the air. 

Somewhere in the astral ether, where words run on and 
never die, a poignant question was still vibrating; an enigma 
raised by the voice of Mr. Strieker, bushy and skeptical: 

“And we shall see what will become of his dreams /” 


CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 


free! 

Through the labyrinth of Pennsylvania Station; through 
gray-railed tunnels, concrete aisles and marble corridors, 
Charley walked, until he came suddenly, taken by surprise, 
into the vast, uplifted rotunda. 

He was filled utterly with joy, and the promise of joy. As 
a spiritual convict, reprieved from an eternal sentence, he 
stood there, thrilling to the marble immensity. To him it 
seemed then that the gray stone reaches of the vaulted nave 
sang with him in his exaltation. The beams of morning 
sunshine filtering through were golden strings, whereon the 
fingers of his soul played a psalm of jubilance. 

He was in dreamland! He was free! Free in the city 
where anything may happen at any time—and quickly. 

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! 

He was pleased and delighted with everything that his eyes 
beheld. 

For that first day he abandoned his eyes to a debauch. He 
forgot to find himself a room, or buy himself a breakfast. 
It was enough for him that he might wander through those 
amazing streets. Not until nightfall did he remember the 
occasions of food and shelter. 

It was in the early spring twilight. He had stopped at a 
crossing on upper Broadway, struck with the purple palisades, 
and the warm glow of lights in a lonely house upon the 
distant height, and the solemn green flowing of the water. 

209 


210 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


Towering walls of apartment houses rising right and left 
hemmed in the sides in perfect concentration. 

“That is beauty,” he whispered. 

Jostled by those who passed by him so quickly, he never¬ 
theless held his ground, until the mothering dusk hid away 
the picture, as if he were a child who had looked upon it 
long enough. 

Here he made a discovery. 

Within the reach of his arm, where he had stood, there was 
an arched gateway, like a secret entrance in an old-world 
street. Above it was a swinging sign, carved in the form of a 
rooster, and on the sign was lettered, “Pomander Walk!” 

“Well!” said Charley to himself. “I must look at this!” 

There were steps, leading up from the gate, and he saw the 
pale glimmer of a lamp. Tingling with boyish curiosity, he 
entered. At the top of the steps he halted with a low excla¬ 
mation of pleasure. There was a courtyard of mysterious 
little houses with gardens, facing each other across a narrow 
walk. At either end were two lighted lanterns on iron posts; 
the smell of lilacs drifted idly on the young night wind. 

Outside was the mad merry-go-round of subway, elevated, 
taxi, dinning under, above and in and out the highways of 
Harlem. Yet by mounting four stone steps, Charley had 
entered into a cloister where beauty was plainly a daily 
prayer. 

He saw that a little old woman had come from one of the 
houses and was moving toward him. Stepping aside, he 
lifted his hat. 

“Good evening,” she said pleasantly. “Were you looking 
for anyone?” 

“I was admiring,” he replied. “I envy the people who can 
live in such a place as this!” 

She stopped and appraised him gravely. 

“I take in roomers, if that is what you mean,” she said. 


FREE! 


211 


She was a Mrs. Church, the widow of a naval officer, who 
had written a book. Three roomers were in her little house, 
a teacher of dancing, who had classes in Carnegie Hall, a 
newspaper columnist, and a young man who worked vaguely 
with the moving pictures. There was an attic room, if the 
gentleman cared to see it. 

The gentleman preferred to arrange for it, then and there, 
before he saw it. 

Thus Charley completed his first practical transaction on 
the island of dreams. The price was high; he realized, dis¬ 
tantly and hazily, that he would have to think about money. 
One would have to earn while one manifested beauty. But 
not to-night. To-morrow would be time enough, and perhaps, 
again, too soon. 

To-night, he sat idly there at the window of his attic room 
with its dormer window; sat there partaking of the lilac 
fragrance; losing his eyes in the deep purple shadows of the 
courtyard; gathering again to his heart his old, banished in¬ 
coherence that was now reclaimed and with him. 

In his ears there was a new song, beautiful and terrible. 
It was the low speeding buzz and hum of the streets and 
houses all around and about him. The atomic rhythm of the 
city was pounding its restless beat into the pulses of his soul. 

Upon him stirred a new and wistful restlessness. He heard 
a call, clarion to action. An eager yearning to do and do 
and do seized him; it was like a mysterious and earnest 
invitation. 

“I shall be quick!” he covenanted there at the window. 
“I shall be quick with my dreams!” 

There was an institution of which the four wise men of the 
lunatic asylum had informed him; the Young Artists Associ¬ 
ation, where one acquired counsel, technique, and, it was 
remarked, inspiration. 

There Charley applied. Promptly upon the morrow he 


212 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


went there, not without a certain trepidation. Nor was this 
all. There was an obstinate and incoherent rebellion in him 
that made him dislike the undertaking. His experience in¬ 
creased this obscure distaste for his matriculation. 

What Charley had expected was a solemn ushering into the 
presence of bearded men in velvet jackets, who would make 
inquiries of him, sound his soul, and test his intentions. 
There was nothing of such an expectation. 

Instead, he came to a lobby, with oak counters much like 
those behind which hotel clerks assign rooms and distribute 
mail. Leaning casually across the counter which he ap¬ 
proached was a girl, whose bored and detached serenity was 
irritating. She did not wait for Charlie to explain, but 
shoved a white and blue card toward him, on the blank lines 
of which he was requested to supply various details of his 
private life. 

On every line he wrote a flourishing lie. 

“Is there no examination?” he asked. 

“No.” 

The reply came, not from the girl he had addressed, but 
from another standing at his side. Charley turned and saw 
that she was observing the signature, “Peter Gaunt,” at the 
bottom of the card. 

She was a golden-haired girl, of a distinctly physical sug¬ 
gestion, except for the clever and inquisitive blue eyes which 
now met his gaze. Her attire bewildered him; there was a 
dash and certitude in it which baffled and charmed him. He 
had not before met a woman dressed so conqueringly. 

“You see,” she explained easily, “the instructor gives the 
class half a day to sketch. Then he goes around and weeds 
out the impossibles.” 

“I see,” said Charley. 

“I hope you’ll like it,” she continued, smiling at him en¬ 
couragingly. “What class did you apply for?” 

“Life class,” replied Charley. 


FREE! 


213 


“I am in the life class,” she exclaimed, as if that were a 
fortunate coincidence. “It’s great—and I know you’ll like 
Mr. Stockbridge. It’s the only co-ed life class in New York.” 

“Yes,” said Charley quietly. “When do the classes begin?” 

The girl behind the desk leaned forward, smiling at 
nothing. 

“In three weeks the summer session starts,” she said. 
“You’ll be notified when to show up!” 

“Thank you,” said Charley, with an inclusive bow, and 
departed. 

“Helen Saylor, you’re the worst heart-breaker I ever saw,” 
said the girl behind the counter vengefully. “Why didn’t 
you leave him alone?” 

“I think he is a most interesting type,” replied Helen. 

“God help him now!” said the girl behind the desk. 

As Charley emerged to the street he was singularly an¬ 
noyed. His rebellion was growing in his soul. It was all so 
business-like. What would Raphael have said had he been 
asked to fill out a card? 

And that girl! Her eyes were too blue, too inquisitive, 
much too clever! 

In those weeks of waiting that followed he traveled the 
island from end to end, bravely and with delight. 

To him it was titanesque, bountiful of weird new beauty, 
filled with awe and mystery. Alone he walked, a triumphant 
vagabond. The solitude of mobs satisfied him. In it he 
walked, cloaked in a warm garment of loneliness; a mantle 
of dreams. Then he had no wish to share his solitary wonder. 

“Surely,” he would reflect, “all this is just as I would wish 
it to be. What can take this from me?” 

His soul made immediate answer to him. Nothing must 
be permitted to take this from him. He must keep to the 
lonely paths, seeing and thrilling. But he must transmit his 


214 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


thrills; he must point out what he saw. That was the obliga¬ 
tion of the artist. 

“Here there is neither neighbor nor gossip,” he reflected. 
“Here I am victoriously let be. Every man is bent upon his 
own hopes, too busy to tell me what I should do with mine. 
That is freedom!” 

It was as childhood revisited. When he was a little boy in 
Baltimore, he ran away, barefoot and alone, to behold the 
marvel of the ships and wharves. Here he was alone once 
more, the unmolested witness of new prodigies. 

When one is born again, one becomes as a little child. In 
the domain of the young sphinx, little children grow up, as 
is the fashion there, quickly. 

Once, in the evening, he stood at the library corner, looking 
up to the lacy minaret of the Bush Terminal tower, with its 
gold aura flung against the purple canopy of the stars. 

To him it was as Aladdin’s magic palace, lifted in clouds 
instantly by the rub of the enchanter’s ring; a page torn from 
the Thousand Nights. 

Squalor? Hunger? Shame? That and worse he read in 
the phantasmagoria of faces everywhere. 

“And what of that?” he asked himself. “There is a beauty 
even in squalor; the hands of hunger and the eyes of shame 
are not for nothing. They would be more ravenous and more 
ashamed, did they not have all this!” 

A curious pleasure came to him on the buses of gold and 
green. To him they were magic chariots, rumbling out of 
his distant childhood. Always he had wanted to ride on a 
circus wagon; this boyish desire flamed anew and was satis¬ 
fied when he rode from Washington Square far up into the 
city. 

It rained one night, and he had to sit inside, downstairs, 
gazing happily through the rain-drenched glass. This made 
him think of the post-chaise days of old England. He began 


FREE! 


215 


to wish he were on a three-day journey, and that presently 
they would ride to the lighted windows of a tavern, famous 
for its roasts and ale. 

He had seen the sleepy kisses of the rising sun pressed 
lightly on the lotus buds in the northern spire of the Catholic 
Cathedral. And he had watched the fleet coming of the dusk, 
clad in lavender and sandaled in gray, upon the Turtle Bay 
Colony, just off Third Avenue. 

In Hell’s Kitchen he had found a restaurant, frequented by 
Italian banditti, who cut their coarse bread with stilettos, 
drawn from their shirts. Here Caruso had feasted liberally 
on spaghetti. Charley had it from the waiter, who served him 
steaming black coffee in a glass tumbler. Here, too, he had 
tasted of the piece de resistance of Paradise— Zavillioni , 
golden and fluttering, smoking hot, odorous of strong, boiling 
rum. 

There was now a light in his eyes, startling even to 
strangers. Impatience was born in him, a fierce, impulsive 
child. He must soon begin. Quickly! Quickly! These 
beauties were quick beauties. He would make new ones, even 
more quickly, and infinitely more beautiful. 

Then came a letter from the Young Artists Association. 
The summer night class was beginning; he was to report the 
next evening. 


CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 


nude! 

To his first day as an art student, Charley brought more than 
his new portfolio, papers and charcoal. 

A fever of energy was in him, burning the brighter, per¬ 
haps, because of the cold contrast of another conflicting 
impulse. The idea of being instructed annoyed him. He was, 
curiously, annoyed at himself for this annoyance. He did 
need instruction, did he not? Well, he supposed that he did. 
Well, then! 

That did not end his inner battle. Something invisible 
within him was offended; he was committing lese majeste 
against that something, nor did his mental suasions placate 
the insult. 

There was thus a cold lethargy in his muscles and a bon¬ 
fire in his veins. 

The life class was two flights up. 

With his mind and heart in hot and cold dissension, 
Charley climbed the stairs. At the open door he paused. 
He saw a large room, walled with frosted windows. Nearly 
a hundred men and women were busy, arranging their chairs, 
or talking excitedly. His distaste increased. 

In making himself kindred with these chatterers, he felt 
there was something of degradation. 

“Why is that?” he asked himself irritably. “Who am I 
that I should be superior to these strangers? They cannot 
share my dreams, I know. But I must share their practical 
knowledge. Is not that so?” 

216 


NUDE! 


217 


Another part of him, regal and uncompromising replied: 

“Who taught Shakespeare to write? Or Michael Angelo 
to make a picture?” 

“That is the fancy of a fool,” he argued angrily. 

“You do not trust your dreams,” reproved that other voice 
in him implacably. “Who are these people? They are the 
illustrators of next year’s magazines, the designers of to-mor¬ 
row’s candy boxes.” 

There was no reasoning with the voice of impulse. He 
deafened his ears unto it, and went in. 

He made himself known to the monitor, a certain Mr. Jes¬ 
sups, whose mustache was pale yellow, and who spoke in a 
hollow and authoritative roar. 

“Mr. Peter Gaunt,” he repeated. “Yes, indeed. Your chair 
is in the next to the last row. We will soon be ready to 
begin.” 

It was evident that Mr. Jessups was important, and to be 
treated with deference. Would the class instructor, Mr. 
Stockbridge, be like Mr. Jessups? Charley had the uncom¬ 
fortable premonition that he would. 

After the example of the other students, Charley upturned 
a chair in front of him, and upon it he placed his portfolio. 
This ritual of initiation was completed by fastening the draw¬ 
ing paper to the portfolio with wooden clasps. They were 
like wooden clothespins, those clasps; patent wooden clothes¬ 
pins; the kind of clothespins Clara had always found the 
most reliable for her weekly wash. 

As Charley sat back, prepared to wait, a tall girl, with 
yellow hair, walked from a door in the rear. Around her was 
a loose green kimono. Moving with an unconscious stride 
of coquetry, she waved sportively to two students as she 
passed. A small stool stood in the center of the floor. She 
mounted this, and then carelessly threw back her kimono, 
letting it fall into the indifferent hands of Mr. Jessups. 


218 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


She was completely nude. 

Naked! 

Here was woman! Here was woman bared! Here she was, 
stripped of pretense, disrobed of imposture, undressed of her 
shams! The contrivances of conniving tailors were peeled 
off and cast into the indifferent hands of Mr. Jessups. What 
remains here, upright upon the pedestal, is Truth! 

This, now, was what lay underneath the velvets and silks, 
and the gay wardrobes of the world’s boudoir. 

No devices here! No coverings, costumes, raiments or 
habiliments! Nothing but woman’s flesh; the flesh of woman 
and the unguessable principle which makes it move. 

Almighty God! Like unto this, Your handiwork, was 
Aphrodite? 

Let us look upon it together, You and I. 

Naked! 

His sensations were incredibly incoherent. 

All unprepared, his soul had been struck a blow. Upon 
this naked girl, as upon Truth itself, he had come, as a man, 
reared in a dark room, is at last thrust rudely into the light. 

Through bleared eyes he watched. 

The pallid Mr. Jessups was calm. He would be. Mr. 
Jessups had seen many nude models. And had he, or had he 
not, what cared he how God had made them? The students 
were calm. What cared they? 

Mr. Jessups casually suggested a pose. With a practiced 
grace, the model assumed it. She, too, was calm. The class 
was calm. Already they were sketching with their charcoal 
pencils. 

The naked model was bored. 

Perhaps Almighty God was bored. At least He was calm. 
He would be. 

But Charley? 

Here was what woman was like at last! 


NUDE! 


219 


It was the first time he had ever looked upon a nude 
woman. Clara had never bared her charms to his husbandly 
eyes. Behind a closet door, in the dark of the bedroom, she 
had disrobed in modest silence, as became a typical, God¬ 
fearing Christian wife. 

Now the veil that concealed the body was lifted! 

The assault which the sight had laid upon his senses left 
him dazed. Somehow, all the women of his dreams had worn 
clothes. He was helpless in the struggle of stupendous thrills 
and repulsions. What his eyes had beheld had awakened 
within him something titanesque. 

What could it be? 

He sank back, with a low murmur of pain. Behind him 
he heard soft laughter. 

“Is this your first night in a life class, Mr. Gaunt?” 

It was the girl who had spoken to him the day he had 
registered. Her eyes were roguishly curious and friendly; 
her lips parted in a smile. 

Charley stared at her. He was wondering if she was like 
the girl on the pedestal, when her clothes were taken off. 
His stare and his silence were rude. She flushed. 

“It is the first time I have ever seen a woman,” he said 
simply. 

“Really, Mr. Gaunt? How naive of you!” 

He did not reply, although he still returned her gaze 
reluctantly. Afterward she was to recall and puzzle upon 
the incoherent sparkle in his eyes. The moment was awkward. 
This man called Peter Gaunt seemed a maker of awkward 
moments. 

She laughed again, low and defiantly. 

“Just wait a little while,” she counseled, lowering her 
eyes. “An old French scientist says the shock of nudity lasts 
only forty-five minutes—even with the most impressionable. 
I was a bit staggered myself the first time I drew from a male 
model!” 


220 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


His smile was incoherent. 

“Forty-five minutes?” he repeated. “I should have said 
forty-five centuries!” 

“Oh, Mr. Gaunt!” 

The shadow of Mr. Jessups came between them. His voice, 
hollower now, and much more authoritative in public repri¬ 
mand, spoke: 

“It’s against the rules to talk, Mr. Gaunt. Miss Saylor 
knows that. I’m surprised at you, Helen!” 

The shadow moved on. Charley said to her: 

“Forty-five eternities!” 

Then he turned back to look again at the model. He had 
welcomed the rebuke. He did not wish to talk with Helen 
Saylor, though her eyes were attractive to him. He wanted 
to look at the model. 

Within him were awakened unfamiliar forces, angry and 
contending. Their struggle was their own; all the while his 
intelligence seemed to be standing to one side, a bewildered 
spectator in the theater of his spirit. 

While she sketched, Helen Saylor kept an eye upon her 
wrist-watch, smiling good humoredly at some amusing secret 
of her own. This mysterious and naive red-haired youth in¬ 
trigued her; she used the word in her mind; “intrigue” and 
“engage” were words to use in her set that season. 

Precisely forty-five minutes after Charley had turned back 
to look at the model, Helen touched him lightly on the 
shoulder. 

“What do you think of her now?” she whispered. 

“Think? Who can think about her? I feel her!” 

She gave him a quick, baffled look. 

“Feeling what, Mr. Gaunt?” 

He made an incoherent gesture with his hands. 

“Don’t you think she has a beautiful body?” Helen 
persisted. 

For a moment he stared at her intently. Then he said: 


NUDE! 221 

“Her flesh is like cream and rose leaves. Her very muscles 
smile and sing to me. But her soul howls out to hell!” 

He had made another awkward moment. By discovering 
a disproportionate line in her sketch, Helen Saylor managed 
her embarrassment cleverly enough, but there was a pause. 

“Mr. Gaunt,” she faltered, after a while, “What can you 
possibly mean?” 

He pointed to her portfolio. 

“May I see what you have done there?” 

After a scrutiny of her half-finished sketch so brief as to 
be an insult, he returned it carelessly. She flushed, but he 
did not see. His mind was drifting from her questions, like 
an unmoored ship, caught in an eager tide. His emotions 
were enacting a melodrama, and the struggle stirred him, 
though he had no clew to the obscure plot of the play. But 
Helen was importunate; the more remote he became, the 
more he appealed to her mind. 

“Why aren’t you drawing?” she whispered. 

“What shall I draw?” His smile was quaint and un¬ 
fathomable. 

“Mr. Gaunt, I think you are trying to make yourself 
deliberately difficult. If it’s your line to act like that, it’s 
good.” 

“Shall I draw that girl’s body? That is what you were 
doing!” 

“That is what we are all doing,” she replied in bewilder¬ 
ment. “That is what you are supposed to do!” 

Her words annoyed him. The revolt of that majestic mys¬ 
tery within him broke out in swift, angry phrases. 

“What about her soul?” he demanded of her. “Her soul 
that howls out to hell? They do not teach you to paint the 
soul here, I see. The physical is all that matters. Forty- 
five minutes is enough for the soul—enough for an eternity 
of art. It makes me think every picture of every woman 
that ever was made was a lie! Even the most impressionable 


222 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


get over the soul in forty-five minutes! Bah! I tell you that 
genius has occult eyes that see the spirit—the form must 
convey it! Do you see what I mean? You sit there and 
stare at me as if I were mad! I tell you God is still waiting 
for a man who can paint Woman!” 

She was offended. 

“Who is this genius?” she asked pertly. “Where is he to 
be found?” 

He laughed, and the timbre of his laughter was a fresh and 
sharper insult. 

“That girl’s body is a cypher in which is symboled the 
secrets of her soul,” he declared, laughing impudently, in a 
high and insolent conviction. Having read her antagonism, 
he would now feed and water it. “It is only necessary to 
read the meaning of this muscle and that curve and yonder 
ligament and you have a picture, not of her body but of 
her!” 

“You seem suddenly very sure, Mr. Gaunt. But you have 
not told me—who is this genius who shall paint the picture 
God wants done—of woman?” 

He laughed again. 

“Who knows?” he said mockingly. 

“You haven’t drawn a stroke, Mr. Gaunt. Why don’t you 
show me what you mean—in a picture?” 

He looked at her full in her angry eyes; the eyes that he 
thought were beautiful. The expression in them now was 
intolerably familiar to him. It was an old light that he 
hated; the cold and envious and destroying glitter that had 
become a permanency in the eyes of Clara Turner; the con¬ 
temptuous reproof in the eyes of Mr. Strieker and his wife 
and his son Henry and all the old brood of those who did 
not like his dreams. 

“Well! Why don’t you show me?” Helen repeated. 

For the first time that evening he lifted his charcoal pencil. 

“I will!” he said, and, turning, bent over a white sheet of 
paper. 


CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE 


WHITE BODIES AND BLACK SOULS 

Muscle and curve and ligament! 

Thighs and torso and the white swell of unmilked breasts! 

Yellow hair and blue eyes and red lips! 

Signs and symbols in the mysterious free-masonry of the 
soul; signs and symbols unrevealed to children; known only 
to the master workmen, brothers of the Living God! 

The scrape of his pencil across the rough toothing of the 
paper was as a bell-stroke in the high tower of his soul. The 
fighting forces postponed their inner combat, mastered by 
something mightier even than they. 

He would draw a picture for her. He would make muscle 
and curve and ligament tell their awful story. With what 
occult perception he beheld the truth he knew not. The 
strange girl upon the pedestal was patent to him, somehow, 
because he could read and understand her muscles, curves 
and ligaments. 

In every stroke of his pencil he would write the truth! 

The winged monster stirred. What was this at its talioned 
feet? 

A traveler, ready for her riddle! 

None who pass this way escape her terrible inquisition. 
The time for the answer is short. If one be quick, her recom¬ 
pense is ready; the dangerous prize is her kiss. Stammer 
and hesitate upon your peril; her patience is intolerant and 
murderous. 


223 


224 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


One must be quick! 

Jason Stockbridge, the instructor of the night class of the 
Young Artists Association, was a figure in the city. He com¬ 
bined a sharp business acumen, with the valuable trick of 
dramatizing his physical appearance and his personal man¬ 
nerisms. 

He acted his part cleverly, in a city where clever acting is 
at a premium. 

Almost seven feet high he towered; a giant with the fancy 
to be a pirate; a teacher of young students who liked to pose 
as a Captain Kidd in well-tailored clothes. About an hour 
after Charley began to sketch, Mr. Stockbridge arrived in the 
class room. By the intimidated Mr. Jessups he stood, regard¬ 
ing the students. Across his chest his arms were folded, as 
Captain Kidd might have postured while waiting for his 
victim to walk the plank; only Mr. Stockbridge was in eve¬ 
ning dress. His mustaches were intensely and provokingly 
black and belligerent. The attitude of his broad-brimmed 
gray hat was an insult. The profusion of black curls, the 
taunting lift of his head, the casual bluster of his shoulders, 
all implied sway and dominion; the authentic gesture of the 
buccaneer. 

He was considered the school’s best advertisement. There 
had been rumors that he was a pirate in virtue, and that he 
accepted small graft, but these had been hushed up. They 
would be! He was so picturesque, was Mr. Stockbridge; he 
added such a tone to the school. 

Stalking imposingly from one portfolio to another, Mr. 
Stockbridge paused for but few comments; it was said that 
in two words he could express what other instructors required 
ten minutes to convey. Two students he ousted as hopeless. 
His progress down the class was rapid, and unquestioned. 

“Mr. Gaunt! That gives me the creeps!” 

Helen Saylor was looking over his shoulder, where his 


WHITE BODIES AND BLACK SOULS 225 

hand worked upon the interpretation of muscle and curve 
and ligament; an explication of the secret of the soul as it 
is contained in flesh; an eclaircissement, attempted and now 
almost an accomplishment. 

What had he done with it? Helen could not estimate in¬ 
telligibly to herself. It gave her the creeps! And what is 
the thing that has always given women the creeps? 

The coiling shape he had drawn was implicitly feminine. 
Every line of it fairly seemed to sing with seduction; a 
human body calling upon ravishment. Muscle and curve and 
ligament were as one voice, crooning passionately; thighs 
and torso were an importunate invitation. The summons and 
desire of warm flesh were in them all. 

Yet what a mockery it was! What an intense and friend¬ 
less revelation! The face of the creature he depicted was 
lovely in feature; exquisite in proportion, yet in its features, 
and in every line and muscle and curve and ligament there 
was something present of the unguessable principle; some¬ 
thing that made an hour’s sketch almost move with life itself; 
something cheap and damnable. 

What it was Helen did not know. It gave her the creeps. 

Mr. Jason Stockbridge had almost completed his tour of 
inspection. A promising class! Only two students rejected! 
Presently he would be done with all this; there was a girl 
waiting for him somewhere; he would go to her with his 
conscience at peace. 

At Charley’s chair, Mr. Stockbridge came to a halt. Seven 
feet high, he towered over the sketch of the red-haired youth, 
so intensely concentrated upon his occupation that he did 
not feel the presence of seven feet of Mr. Stockbridge. 

Across his chest Mr. Stockbridge folded his mighty arms; 
his mustaches seemed to be blacker and more belligerent; 
his head shook, and the black curls trembled; the wide 
brimmed gray hat increased the sneer of its attitude. 


226 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


“What is that you are trying to do, young man?” asked 
Mr. Stockbridge, in a tone dangerously suave, bland and 
magniloquent. 

Charley drew a significant line between the lips. 

“This is a fancy,” he said buoyantly; “the fancy of dis¬ 
covered fact. This is the temple of Aphrodite, now inhabited 
by a hag, since Aphrodite is dead and at the bottom of the 
sea!” 

“What is that? What is that you are saying, young man?” 

Charley grinned at him. 

“In my town,” he said, “there are fine old houses, but the 
old families are fled. Negroes live in them now. It is the 
same with girls like that—white bodies but black souls!” 

Mr. Stockbridge frowned ominously. The muscles and 
curves and ligaments of his face moved in disapproving 
bluster. 

“Young man,” he said blandiloquently, “this is not a place 
for freakish experiments, or the indulgence of boyish eccen¬ 
tricities. This is a class to study the human body. I think 
you belong in the antique class. Hands, sir! Especially the 
human hand. The very first thing to acquire, young man. 
As for that atrocity-” 

He reached over and took up a pencil. With emphatic 
swings of his hand back and forth across the paper, he ruined 
the sketch with angry, jagged lines, criss cross and torment¬ 
ing and full of malice. 

Charley glared upon it, but only for an instant. Then he 
turned and looked upon Mr. Jason Stockbridge. Not a 
symbol of the seven feet escaped him. Muscle and curve 
and ligament was there in the face, and bulging under 
evening attire, to be read by the initiated brothers of the 
Living God. 

Angry, jagged lines, criss cross and tormenting and full 
of malice! What could be reclaimed from them? One stroke 
here! Quickly! The winged monster of riven stone turns 


WHITE BODIES AND BLACK SOULS 227 


its lidless eyes upon you. Stammer and hesitate upon your 
peril! Read the riddle quickly of muscle and curve and 
ligament, emphatic with bluster. 

The dangerous prize is her kiss! 

A stroke here! A stroke there! A chamois cloth to obli¬ 
terate this! A new curve rounded here. 

Helen sees. Helen sees what the red-haired mysterious man 
is about! He is making a face out of a figure, crossed with 
criss cross lines, tormenting and full of malice. See how 
malice and torment may be made to serve the friendless 
purposes of revelation! 

New lines and old lines, intermingling and redrawn. A 
broad-brimmed hat over the hair, made into curls by hideous, 
quick little strokes. Angry lines already drawn are mus¬ 
taches now, black and belligerent. The woman’s buttocks 
are become his lips. 

See! Let our brother Gods laugh hilariously together at 
what we are doing here! Helen sees, and with a scream of 
laughter holds up the picture so that all the class may behold 
the thing the dreamer has done. 

Cruel and tormenting satire! Cruel and tormenting laughter 
shrieking from a hundred throats. Turn away, mild Mr. 
Jessups, lest you, too, laugh a hollow and authoritative 
laugh. Roar and stamp, you pirate, for here you are! 
Here is your soul, drawn in muscle and curve and ligament. 
Here is your character in lines of charcoal, stark, denuded, 
stripped of pretense, imposture, sham. Here is the rapine 
you hide under your clothes! Here is the graft that has 
crossed your fat palms! Here is your bluster naked! 

Naked! 

Roar and shout and 1 shriek, wild, belligerent, revengeful 
laughter! The class was unloosed with mirth. Chairs were 
overturned; drawings spilled upon the floor; the model crept 


228 BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

on bare, noiseless feet to join the throng and see that amaz¬ 
ing caricature. 

Around the red-haired, pale-faced man they eddied, deaf¬ 
ening his ears with their laughter. There had never been 
such a caricature! How had the fellow done it? A hundred 
tongues were babbling, but none answered the question. The 
truth was slyly hidden somewhere in muscle and curve and 
ligament, and some of the lines had been drawn by Stock- 
bridge himself. 

The lidless eyes of the winged monster settled in an amused 
stare upon the traveler. Here was a stranger, ready with his 
answer. The creature wet its lips with its tongue. The 
dangerous prize is her kiss. 

Charley found himself on the sidewalk outside. He was 
bewildered. The class had been dismissed. Stockbridge had 
revoked his application. He would not, could not, nor did 
he care to, study at the Young Artists Association again. 

Some one touched him on the arm. It was Helen Saylor. 
He looked down into her eyes curiously. 

“Oh, Mr. Gaunt,” she quavered, “I don’t know whether to 
be sad or glad! It was all my fault. I tormented you into 
drawing that picture. And it did give me the creeps. I—I 
think you’re wonderful, Mr. Gaunt. Please don’t speak. I—I 
never saw such an uncanny thing in my life. And that pic¬ 
ture of poor Mr. Stockbridge! He’s just furious—but it was 
him, every line of it was him. Mr. Gaunt, you’re going to be 
famous. Everybody up there is talking about you. I know 
what I’m going to do! I owe it to you to do something and 
I’m going to speak to-” 

“You owe me nothing,” he said. 

“But I shall do it!” she declared, her eyes brightening as 
one conscious of her own power over some one. “You will 
never regret having made that funny picture, Mr. Gaunt. 



WHITE BODIES AND BLACK SOULS 229 


Tell me! Won’t you lunch with me tomorrow at the 
Onandaga?” 

He liked her eyes. And for the first time since he had 
come to New York he was lonely. Those primitive forces 
within him were at their old struggle already. 

“Yes,” he said. “I should like to!” 

“Then be there at one o’clock! The check is on me—the 
modern girl thing, you know. Good night and au revoir, 
strange and handsome Peter Gaunt!” 

Alone! Alone, in the shadow of the crashing elevated; 
of steep towers and gaunt, blear buildings; a battle in his 
soul, and a hunger in his heart. 

That hunger touched him with a remembrance, and aroused 
a grotesque purpose. 

A smile! A red smile, rich with tenderness and something 
else elusive and unreachable. 

He fumbled in his vest pocket. The struggle within him 
was waging, fierce and strong. Yes! There it was! Her 
name and her address. 

Melodie! The cheaply dressed girl with the rich smile! 

The hour was less than ten. He would not return to his 
attic room in Pomander Walk so soon. 

He would seek out Melodie! 


CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX 


GOD HELP US, HURRY! 

And why to Melodie? 

Through Charley Turner’s mind the impulse to find the 
cheaply dressed girl with the rich smile was blowing like a 
clean wind. The effect was keen and bracing. There had 
been in his thoughts a fog, an incoherence now pleasantly 
dissolving. 

Gayly he set off toward Broadway. His feet felt as if they 
had wings. On his lips bubbled an old song. As he swung 
into the long street of lights, he laughed softly. 

It did not occur to him to wonder at himself. If it had 
been a night of excitement, of madness even, perhaps there 
was more madness yet to be. He liked that. Had be paused 
to wonder upon anything, it would have been the majestic 
approval deep within him; the peace of an inner benediction. 

Practical questions tried to intrude themselves upon his 
excellent humor. Had he not, in the midst of his first session 
in the life class, been thrown out of the school? 

“I should probably be thrown out of any school,” he told 
himself. “It is the way of schools with men like me!” 

How, then, was he to acquire the art to give his visions 
utterance? To what would he turn now, on the rocky island 
of dreams? 

His self-communing smile dismissed these idle riddles. He 
had heard the piper’s tune of whim and impulse, and he had 
no time to cross-examine. On he hurried to Melodie. 

230 


231 


GOD HELP US, HURRY! 

As he came from under the shadows of the elevated at 
Fifty-third Street, a huge hand, made of electric lights, 
opened and closed before his eyes. It was displayed upon 
the top of a theater; an advertisement for a popular brand 
of cigarettes. 

Hands! 

For a moment, the song fled from his mouth. The fog 
clouded in his thoughts. The madness of those moments in 
the life class returned; the madness that heated his fingers 
as he drew the wild figure on his paper; a sweet and glowing 
intoxication of the regal mystery within. 

Hands! 

Stockbridge had invited him into the antique class, that he 
might learn to sketch hands. Dead hands! Plaster hands! 
Were there not thousands of draughtsmen who could draw 
hands for Stockbridge? And why, indeed, should they or 
any one else draw dead hands, when so many had already been 
drawn ? 

And who had drawn a hand with a soul? He should have 
asked Stockbridge that. There was no soul in a plaster hand. 
He smiled surely. 

“When Jesus fed his twelve in the upper room,” he mur¬ 
mured, “—white bread with red wine he gave them—what 
was it he said? The hand of his betrayer lay upon the table. 
That was what Jesus said. Jesus had seen the hand, then? 
Had he not seen the soul of the hand! Ah, there was a hand 
worth drawing, Stockbridge! One wouldn’t find its model 
in a plaster cast! Find the artist who can paint the hand of 
Judas!” 

Again he smiled, even more surely. 

“These painters and sketchers of plaster hands,” he mut¬ 
tered, “grow to have plaster hands themselves. They would 
not recognize the hand of Judas, not if they touched its moist 
palm and shriveled fingers!” 

He was passing a theater. Framed on its walls were orna- 


232 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


mental sketches of show girls. One of them resembled 
Melodie. Seeing it, he hastened; and he sang again, and the 
whimsical breeze in his mind blew away the mists of specu¬ 
lation. 

In the Times Square hubbub, Charley was forced to 
slacken his steps, but his mood remained impervious among 
these perfumed masses. The nearer he approached to Mel- 
odie’s house, the happier he found himself, and the more 
coherent his intention became. 

He was blind to the dancing gargoyles, posturing in electric 
leaps and bends upon the roof of the Hotel Astor; blind, to 
the millions of blinking electric bulbs, red, green, yellow, 
blue, pink, orange, and purple. He was deaf to the shriek¬ 
ing of the auto horns; the gabble of ten thousand tongues in 
all their various jargons; the clamor and the riot of the For¬ 
ties. Let Broadway shudder in its garish incoherence; he was 
at peace with a purpose that was growing in intelligence. 

The nude model had something to do with his search for 
Melodie. When he had first looked upon her, a cold frenzy 
danced in his pulses; he had seemed to interpret her soul 
in that one shocked glance. He had known her to be the 
naked expression of all that disappointed him in women. 
Warmed with wonder at her body; frozen with pity at her 
soul! 

Out of what occult penetration had he perceived that? He 
could not surmise. But now he knew that he was seeking 
Melodie because, in her cheapness and her richness, he had 
once perceived, present and alive, all the nude model had 
lacked. 

He stood at the corner of Broadway and the street on 
which she lived. A doubt arose in his mind. Had she cheated 
him? How could any one live here, in the very heart of in¬ 
coherent Broadway? 


233 


GOD HELP US, HURRY! 

Again he looked at her card. The address was written 
plainly, and after it, a mischievous line: “Just forty-five 
seconds from Broadway.” 

He stared down the darkened street. It was but one block; 
at the farther end the stark piers of the Sixth Avenue elevated 
crossed in mid-air. Beyond that was a green park, lighted 
with mild white lamps. 

Cheap little stores and restaurants lined the street on the 
southern side. Opposite, midway in the block, an immense 
office building towered into the night sky. Between him and 
this office building there remained a stretch of shabby wooden 
houses. Perhaps Melodie lived in one of them. 

He walked eastward until he stood opposite the first of the 
wooden houses. Its ancient clapboards were painted a bright 
yellow. A swinging sign, creaking in the wind, announced 
that here was an old-fashioned English tea room. Above it, 
the wall had been torn out, to make a show window for a 
theatrical boot shop. 

Pleased, he walked on. These absurd little houses were 
admirable. In this shouting region of dancing gargoyles, of 
concrete, brick and steel, they were astonishing incongruities. 
To Charley, they were like poor, but self-respecting old 
women, these houses; the very paint on their old boards was 
dried like withered skin. No flowers bloomed in the railed- 
in garden spaces; all the houses were given over to shops of 
one kind or another, and in front of them was displayed the 
wares of one concern; a rambling collection of rusted iron¬ 
mongery. Tongs and shovels and pokers and andirons; fire¬ 
place fittings, swinging lanterns; post-lights and ornaments 
of wrought metal, fashioned by patient hands, were sprawled 
in bewildering exhibition. 

The last house nestled close to the wall of the office build¬ 
ing. Its basement had a shop-window, in which a small 
painting in oil was offered for sale. A dim light was burn- 


234 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


ing in the room, and Charley could see an old man, seated 
in a rocking chair, smoking a pipe and reading a book. 

For the last time Charley consulted the card. This was the 
house where Melodie lived; forty-five seconds from Broadway. 

Would Melodie be glad to see him? What would he say 
to her? How could he explain his calling upon her, at half¬ 
past ten in the evening? He smiled, remembering that down 
in Baltimore most of his people were asleep. Here, on the 
island of dreams, one called when one wanted to. 

Passing the shop window, he went down a short flight of 
wooden steps, and knocked at the door. Presently he heard 
the shuffle of feet, and the voice of the old man, calling upon 
a dog to be quiet. Then the door opened, and the old man 
thrust his face out toward Charley. 

“Well?” he asked sharply. 

“Is Melodie at home?” 

“Is what?” 

The old man stepped out into the vestibule, and, turning his 
face sideways, exposed his ear, as if that were a key to his 
head and he wished Charley to turn it with his teeth. 

“I am looking for a young woman by the name of Melodie,” 
repeated Charley. 

“Bill collector?” snapped the old man, with a savage 
hunching forward of one shoulder. 

“No! A friend!” 

“Friend! Friend indeed! Another friend! There’s a lot 
of friends been coming around here since she’s got her job. 
Where were you all during her trouble? That’s what I want to 
know. I was the only friend she had then. No, she’s not 
home. I don’t know when she’ll be home!” 

The contemptuous indifference of the old man was empha¬ 
sized by a liberal expectoration. 

“I shall be here to see her again,” said Charley patiently. 


GOD HELP US, HURRY! 235 

“Would you mind saying to her that Mr. Peter Gaunt called— 
the man she met on the train?” 

The old man was backing triumphantly through the door, 
but at Charley’s words, he paused, with a low exclamation. 

“Are you the man who bought her those sandwiches?” he 
asked. 

Charley smiled. 

“God forgive me for an old fool, sir! She’ll never forgive 
me, if she finds out about this. The way that girl talks about 
you, Mr. Gaunt, you’d think it was a case of love at first sight. 
Won’t you please come in, Mr. Gaunt, and let me make 
amends?” 

He continued to mutter imprecations upon his own stu¬ 
pidity as he led Charley into an old-fashioned room, filled 
with fragrant tobacco smoke. After indicating a comfortable 
rocking chair, with a gallant sweep of his hand, he produced 
a thick stone jug from which he poured two glasses of yellow 
wine. 

“To Melodie, sir!” he proposed, holding up his glass, and 
together they downed the toast. 

“You are a real friend of Melodie,” was Charley’s comment. 

“I am that, sir. Do you know, Mr. Gaunt, I think Melodie 
would never forgive me if she knew how I treated you?” 

“Then don’t tell her!” advised Charley. “It shall be our 
secret. Do you think she will be here soon?” 

“Haven’t you been reading about her in the papers?” asked 
the old man sharply. 

“No, Mr.-” 

“Watts! Alexander Watts,” supplied the old man, readily. 

“No, Mr. Watts. Has Melodie been getting herself into the 
papers?” 

Mr. Watts nodded solemnly, as he sought for matches. 
Finding his pockets empty, he excused himself and left the 
room. Glancing around the room, Charley noted the many 


236 BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

oils and water colors displayed on the mantel and against 
the walls. 

“Are you an artist, Mr. Watts?” he inquired, when the 
old man returned, puffing on his pipe. 

“I’m a dead artist, Mr. Gaunt,” he replied quietly. “Do 
you know what a dead artist means? It means a living fool! 
This city is full of animated corpses of artists. We come 
here, determined to paint the most wonderful pictures in the 
world. And then something happens to us. God help us, I 
suppose it’s the town. No! I don’t try any more. I sell 
pictures for artists who haven’t quite died yet. The alto¬ 
gether dead artists won’t do business with me; they sell on 
Fifth Avenue!” 

He laughed slowly. Charley smiled in understanding 
sympathy. He liked Mr. Alexander Watts all the more 
because of the certain heartbreak hidden beneath his bitter 
jesting. He might himself have died this very night if he 
had gone into the antique class. 

“You started to tell me about Melodie’s getting into the 
newspapers,” suggested Charley. 

“God help us, Mr. Gaunt! She’s on the stage at last. And 
to think you hadn’t heard. Why, she has Broadway by the 
nose!” 

“That is splendid news!” agreed Charley, touched at the 
old man’s earnest enthusiasm. “She said something to me 
about having tried, but they all said she wasn’t good-” 

“God help us all, Mr. Gaunt! / knew better. They all told 
her she wasn’t good enough except her friend, Alexander 
Watts. I knew better. I knew there was something wonderful 
about that little girl. Only it took eyes like mine to see it. 
She fools people, Mr. Gaunt. They think she hasn’t much 
education—and she hasn’t. But she’s got everything about else 
in the world. Everything! Mind? She’s smart as steel. 
Body? The first time I ever saw her—she was a model, then, 



GOD HELP US, HURRY! 237 

for one of my artists—I just gasped! She’s—she’s just 
beautiful, Mr. Gaunt!” 

“And she has a soul,” murmured Charley. 

“Has she?” shouted the old man, rising and gesticulating 
with his pipe. “Has she a soul, Mr. Gaunt? God help us!” 

He came over to Charley’s chair and put his hand on 
Charley’s shoulder. 

“You don’t know that little girl,” he said. “I guess they 
wouldn’t speak to her down in the town where she was born. 
But what does that matter? When she was hungry, she had 
to eat, didn’t she? And if she couldn’t get work, what was 
she to do? Well! She did it. She did what many another 
girl has done before her! That poor fellow of hers, dying of 
tuberculosis out West—where do you suppose she would have 
got the money to keep him on earth, if she hadn’t done what 
she did? God help us, she’s a mystery! There she was! 
Full of trouble, if ever anybody had trouble in this world. 
Double trouble, every day of her life. I haven’t told you the 
worst of her trouble, Mr. Gaunt. She wouldn’t like it, per¬ 
haps, so I won’t. But she smiled through it all—that sweet 
smile that hasn’t a duplicate in the world!” 

“You’ve noticed it, too?” said Charley. 

“Noticed it? God help us, Mr. Gaunt! It cut me to the 
heart. When she was sick I nursed her as if she was my 
own daughter—and I’ve never even had a wife. She will smile 
on judgment day. And you didn’t know the good news?” 

Charley smiled and shook his head. 

“There’s only one thing to do!” declared Mr. Watts, rising 
in sudden excitement. “Just a minute.” 

From his pocket he drew a large, tarnished watch. Cluck¬ 
ing his lips in satisfaction, he began a new search through his 
pockets and finally produced a pink slip of paper. 

“This is a door pass to the theater,” he said hurriedly. 
“It will take you in. She gave it to me, but I’ve seen it four 
times already, and besides I can get another one. She goes 


238 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


on in just twenty minutes; just at the close of the show. 
Hurry up, and you can see her—and then you can pick her 
up at the stage door and bring her here. I’ll be waiting for 
you! Hurry, now!” 

“Where is it?” asked Charley excitedly. In the old man’s 
enthusiasm there was a contagion which warmed him. 

“Summer Garden!” cried Mr. Watts. “Hurry, now! She’s 
got Broadway by the nose. It’s the most wonderful thing in 
the world. Better take a cab. You don’t want to miss any 
of it!” 

Babbling and chuckling, the old man led Charley to the 
street. Though he was bent and coatless, he insisted on going 
to the corner of Broadway and calling a taxi. 

“Take this gentleman to the Summer Garden,” he told the 
chauffeur sonorously. “And God help us, hurry!” 


CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN 


VENUS WAS NOT DEAD! 

They said on Broadway that the new Summer Garden show 
was a knockout. It was the year in which nudity was put on 
parade—and the Summer Garden was in the vanguard of 
Fashion, as always. 

The lyrics and music were by A1 Brookville; the dialogue 
was by Hobart Glynn; Eddie Lane had staged the dances; 
the designs were by M. Sutre; the ballet was under the direc¬ 
tion of Rabitzoff, and the whole performance was under the 
personal supervision of Messrs. Abe and Aaron Coyne, the 
producers. 

Charley Turner arrived at the brilliant entrance to the 
theater at the hour when the revue was racing jazzily to its 
startling finale. His mind was caught with a high curiosity. 
In a few moments he was to see Melodie again! But under 
what surprising conditions! What would she do? 

The pink ticket he presented at the door gained him admis¬ 
sion. At the rear of the aisles, men and women were standing, 
three deep; the vast theater was crowded. As he sought a 
place, the music was playing a jiggling melody, and two thin 
young men in evening clothes were pacing through eccentric 
steps before a silver curtain. A shattering salvo of applause 
rewarded them as Charley halted at the head of an aisle; a 
forbidden spot, from which he could see the stage perfectly. 

The smirking young dancers appeared and reappeared, bow¬ 
ing grotesquely, until the lights went out and the orchestra 
began a low, beguiling prelude. 

239 


240 BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

Then the silver curtain lifted in the final episode of the 
entertainment. 

As the stage was fully revealed, Charley strained his eyes, 
and filled with a baffled sense of disappointment. He saw 
that there now hung between the spectators and the players 
a curtain of transparent gauze. In the center was an oval 
pool of blue water, girdled with a marble curb, and from this 
pool of blue water a slender fountain of spray leaped and 
fell impetuously. A great company of young women reclined 
about the pool in idle postures of graceful indolence. Over 
all the scene brooded a trembling silver light. 

Beautiful, as a scene on the stage may well be beautiful. 
But where was Melodie? Was she one of those shadowy 
young women, reclining around the marble girdle of the pool? 
Was this what the old man had bidden him here to see? 

They were singing, those indolent young women; between 
closed teeth they were singing a low-hummed music. Yearn¬ 
ing, and the entreaty of warm ardor was in the cadence of 
their young voices. Slowly the Lydian measures swelled, 
their tender pleading mounting until at last the chorus seemed 
to burst forth sweetly in a wild dithyramb of passion; an 
exorcism, crying out to love. 

To Charley, it seemed his heart was singing with them, 
crying out to Melodie. 

The fountain trembled in the silver light. They were 
singing the song of love again, those indolent young women 
by the marble basin of blue water. As if the fountain had 
heard the song, and was touched by its pleading, the slender 
spiral of spray rose higher, trembling and growing with the 
music. Its impetuous falling and leaping was a very dance 
of passion, lambent, undulating, and responsive. 

And now something was stirring and alive in the dancing 
water, called and cried out for, exorcised out of the cool blue 
quiet of the pool. 


VENUS WAS NOT DEAD! 


241 


Something alive and warm was appearing within the silver 
spiral of passionate spray; something rising, higher and still 
higher with each responsive leap and undulation. 

A woman! A woman nude and alive! A woman from the 
water, rising in rhythm with the dance of spray and the song 
of the sweet young voices. Higher! Higher yet! One more 
adventurous leap of the ardent fountain; one last thrilling 
cry in the song of the young woman, and the figure is free. 
Poised there, with the foamy lace upon her fair young form, 
she was volant in the air, the resurrection of beauty out of 
death, altogether lovely. 

Beautiful and astonishing Melodie! 

The heart of the dreamer looked out of his eyes. 

He groped his way out of the theater, as the curtain swiftly 
descended and the emerging crowd engulfed him. 

He was awed. This girl, upon whose nude beauty he had 
gazed through the curtain of transparent gauze, was the same 
girl with whom he had ridden through the dark of a mem¬ 
orable night. She had told him then she was no better than 
she should be. 

Yet over his heart she had flung a spell of amazement. He 
had read the richness of her wonder in her smile; he had 
witnessed the revelation of her beauty, eloquent in muscle and 
curve and ligament. Where was the cheapness vanished to? 
Why was this so different a spectacle to the model on the 
pedestal of the life class? 

White body and shining soul? 

Was this an illusion, conjured up by the sorcery of his 
fancy? Or had he occult eyes to know what it was he had 
beheld? The old man had said one must have eyes to see 
these mysteries. 

Suddenly he laughed aloud. He shook with the mirth of 
a giant; his muscles shivered with his prodigious laughter. 

God, what a comedian You are! 

Here, in the Summer Garden of Broadway, had come to 


242 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


pass the most staggering and the most amusing of all the 
miracles. Messrs. Abe and Aaron Coyne had personally 
supervised for him the production of the risen wonder of 
Aphrodite, lifted and living, out of the sea. 

Venus was not dead, after all. The wise old lunatics were 
not mistaken. Was it possible they had known the amazing 
truth from the beginning? Had they suspected he would 
learn some day where to search? In their insane wisdom, 
had they understood the appalling jest? 

Venus was not dead. Venus had been expelled from 
respectable society. Venus had gone on the town. Immortal 
Aphrodite had found her dwelling place at last in the soul 
of the prostitute. 

Who but a madman could find that out? 

Not until the dark of early morning, as he sat at the open 
window, looking down upon the little gardens of Pomander 
Walk, did he remember. 

He was to have looked for Melodie at the stage door. The 
old man had promised to be waiting for them. 

He decided it was preferable that he had forgotten. For 
one night in New York, the cup of experience was filled. Now 
the piper’s tune in his soul called him to solitude and dream¬ 
ing. He could not think. He could only feel, inhaling grate¬ 
fully of the lush night fragrance; the healing smell of little 
pines and cedars in the gardens, and the drifting perfume of 
the roses. 

A great fog of doubt was cleared away. Venus was not 
dead! Somehow he would learn to paint the picture of 
Woman for which God had waited so long. And Melodie 
would be its model and its inspiration. 

Only he knew the last mystery was still hidden from him— 
the enigmatic mystery of her smile. 

Enough now! It had been a tremendous evening on the 
rocky island of his dreams. 


CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT 


BEHIND THE RED CORD 

When Helen Saylor said good night to the red-haired young 
man who had created such excitement in the life class, she 
still held in her hand his caricature of Mr. Stockbridge. 

The red-haired young Peter Gaunt filled her thoughts. She 
considered him handsome, poetic and mysterious; a new and 
surprising type. Helen pursued new and surprising types of 
manhood with the zeal of a collector, but most of her surprises 
had been disappointments. 

She was defiantly feminine in her modernism; she was a 
member of the Woman Peace Club, and an evangelist of the 
free love gospel, who occasionally practiced its doctrines. 
Up in Schenectady, where she was born, her folks worried 
about her. She knew everybody she wanted to know and was 
invited wherever she wanted to go. 

When she first arrived in New York she tried verses, but 
after an amourette with a Greenwich Village poet, she con¬ 
ceived a dislike for metrical expression. For the next two 
years she ran a tea-room on Seventy-second Street, and this 
season she was taking up drawing in a serious way. 

In her reading she had learned a great deal about sex. 
One did in her set. She was able to quote extensively from 
the Satyricon of Petronius; she possessed a handsome volume 
of Smith’s Poetica Erotica; she had read all of the Havelock 
Ellis Studies in the Psychology of Sex; she knew the Memoirs 
of Fanny Hill, and she had memorized in the original German 
the thirty-two positions of Aretino. 

243 


244 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


Somehow, life was proving a disappointment to Helen, and 
each new and surprising type of man she found held the 
promise of restored illusion. In young Mr. Peter Gaunt she 
had seen such a promise. 

Now, as Helen waited for a Fifth Avenue bus that would 
take her to her studio apartment on Twelfth Street, an idea 
suddenly occurred to her; a whimsical purpose that brought 
a smile of amusement to her lips. While she dallied with 
the idea, she permitted two buses to rumble past. The more 
she thought upon it, the happier and more practical the plan 
appeared. She glanced at her wrist watch. It was growing 
late, but there might yet be time. 

After all, why not? The question answered itself. There 
was no reason, really, why she shouldn’t, and it might be the 
making of young Mr. Peter Gaunt. 

The Hotel Plaza was nearby. From one of its telephones, 
five minutes later, Helen was in cordial and animated con¬ 
versation with Tony Durand, the satirical columnist of the 
morning Sphere. Tony was one of her new and surprising 
types who had proved a severe disappointment, but they were 
still good friends. Tony had met a severe disappointment 
himself in a later episode. He had encouraged a chaste and 
beautiful little Western blonde to write sonnets, but at a 
crucial moment Mr. Jason Stockbridge had blustered into the 
affair and carried off the chaste and beautiful blonde on his 
arm. Helen was counting on that. 

Her voice bright with enthusiasm, she told Tony the story 
of what a young and handsome red-haired stranger had done 
to Mr. Jason Stockbridge that very night in the life class. 
To all of it Tony listened in utter silence; a remarkable 
indication of his interest. 

“You get in a cab and come right down here with that pic¬ 
ture,” said Tony, at the close of Helen’s story. “I’ll stay up 
half the night to get a cut made of the thing, and I’ll write 
half a column about it to lead my stuff to-morrow morning. 


BEHIND THE RED CORD 245 

God kiss you, Helen, for a kind, good child. I knew the day 
would come when I would get Mr. Jason Stockbridge.” 

It is high noon in the West Forties; the luncheon hour at 
the Onandaga. 

Across the doorway of its favorite dining room a red cord 
swings. Only to admit those who have answered readily and 
without stammering the riddle of the young sphinx may the 
red cord be lifted. To those whose tongues were tied, to 
those who hesitated or deliberated, the red cord swings and 
bars the way. 

The red cord is said to divide the sheep from the goats, but 
who are the sheep and who are the goats is a matter of 
several opinions. 

Beyond the red cord are spread silver and napery, food 
and drink, tables and chairs, and against the walls, long 
benches upholstered in green velour. It is a crowded dining 
room, for the name of those who have answered the riddle 
promptly, without stammering, without taking undue counsel 
of conscience, is legion. The air is filled with drifting smoke, 
and the babble of red and clever tongues. Upon the hour of 
high noon, the babble is without pause; it is a low, incessant 
murmur, pitched within a sinister octave, sonorous with 
favorite chords. 

Gold and sex! Cash and concupiscence! Money and 
woman. 

Of these subjects the red and clever tongues babble with¬ 
out pause. And whose tongues are these that babble here at 
high noon in the West Forties; whose are these red and clever 
tongues that murmur insistently, so insistently of sex and 
gold, of cash and concupiscence, of money and woman? 

Here are the hireling dreamers. Here gather the visionaries 
who have accepted harness and oats. Here assemble and dis¬ 
semble the paid favorites of the young sphinx; dreamers who 
have taken its kiss and found its breath fatal as the basilisk. 


246 BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

And of what they whisper, the sex is sham sex and the gold 
is brass. 

They know everything now and believe nothing any more. 
They know that religion is a perverted sexual hysteria. They 
do not believe there is a God. They know that there is 
Lesbianism in Long Island. They do not believe there is a 
pure love of one man and one woman anywhere. They are 
the wisest company in the world; the best customers for 
intellectual gold-bricks in history. 

Of the countless other little dining rooms with red cords 
of their own kind, this is the most pompous, the most swagger, 
the most blatant. 

Babble! Babble! Babble! And in the shrill music of 
the babble there is a bass clef of pathos. Listen well and you 
shall surely hear its melancholy. 

For while they speak of woman and gold, their hearts are 
mourning another thing altogether. This is a dining room, 
crowded with Josephs from the hinterland hills; Josephs who 
know that every flower they pluck now grew on the grave of a 
buried dream. 

Here are the Josephs who dared not flee the harlot. Her 
hands seized their cloaks; her lips called them with red 
enticement; they might have fled and left the coat of many 
colors in her hand. 

They remained. 

Of their imperial master they made a cuckold. They 
pillowed their heads on the breast of the harlot. And now 
here they Bit at luncheon, babbling in a red chord, careless 
of the prices on the menu, the prosperous favorites of a very 
vulgar mistress. 


CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE 


CHARLEY DRAWS A PICTURE 

It was high noon in the West Forties; luncheon hour at the 
Onandaga, and around one of its famous tables a group of 
Helen Saylor’s friends babbled heartily. 

“Everybody is talking about it,” Miriam Shaw was saying. 
She poured herself a generous three-fingers of Scotch from 
a silver flask. “Helen has been calling up every one she 
knows. I wouldn’t be surprised if she waltzed in here any 
moment with the man. Weil, for one, I’m glad it happened. 
Stockbridge had it coming to him, I say, and it was a God¬ 
awful funny picture.” 

She drank the liquor at a practiced gulp. Miriam was the 
best stage interviewer in New York, and was to be relied 
upon to tell you the worst about any theater star after her 
third drink. No popular magazine was complete without her 
impressions of some beauty or hero 'of the stage. Once 
she had written verse; shy lines with sparks that promised 
some day to come to flame. But her tastes were expensive; 
the interviews were profitable, and Miriam put away her 
poetry. 

“I suppose he is Helen’s latest sensation,” said Magda 
Marlowe Mather, the dramatist. “Last year it was an 
athlete. To-day it is a cartoonist. To-morrow she’ll be after 
my husband, I suppose!” 

“Want him taken off your hands?” asked Dangerfield 
Masters, the poet of passion. 

“No. Not that,” replied Magda, filling her own glass 
247 


248 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

languidly. “But I want him to get back to women around my 
own age. He’s showing too active an interest in flappers 
these days; everybody says the flappers are going out, and I 
hope they go quick. I’d rather have him flirt with women my 
own age.” 

Magda was a success in art and matrimony. The critics 
said her plays were authentic, which ' was due, probably, to 
their being sterile of hope. She had a camera soul, recording 
life through astigmatic lenses, and her pictures were shadowed 
with a somber incredulity. Once she had danced, and when 
she was a little girl she believed in a wishing ring. Then 
she married a manufacturer and became involved in dramatic 
photography. 

“What are you all talking about?” asked Sonya Bellaire, 
the editor of a sophisticated story book. She had been admir¬ 
ing the broad shoulders of a waiter. 

“Good Lord, Sonya,” protested Dangerfield Masters. “Do 
you mean to say you haven’t heard about the roast Tony 
gave Stockbridge in his column this morning?” 

Masters was a poet of young passion, high in the favor of 
fashionable society on Long Island; a man with never enough 
money to live on, who was invited into the best drawing 
rooms. Of Masters it was said that for a new suit of clothes 
he would introduce any one into the red plush and velvet 
circles. 

“No,” said Sonya to Masters, making coaxing motions with 
her fingers toward him for a cigarette, “What is it all about?” 

“Well,” said Masters, rather put down at such ignorance, 
“you did know, didn’t you, that Stockbridge stole the Mait¬ 
land girl right under Tony’s nose, didn’t you know that, 
Sonya?” 

“I knew it in advance. I warned Tony,” boasted Sonya, 
blowing a wreath of smoke contemptuously from her lips. 
“Go on, Masters; you try to be too damned dramatic.” 


CHARLEY DRAWS A PICTURE 249 

“Well,” interposed Miriam comfortably, pouring another 
drink, “Tony’s even now!” 

“You see, Sonya,” continued Masters, giving her an offended 
glance, “there was a jolly row up at the life class last night. 
Some red-headed young beggar-” 

“Helen would like that” put in Miriam. 

“Some red-headed young beggar,” insisted Masters, “that 
nobody ever heard of before, joined the class and on his first 
night there drew a sketch that Stockbridge didn’t like. So 
Stockbridge expressed his disapproval by crossing the sketch 
all over with charcoal. Well! The boy—Peter Gaunt, of all 
names on earth—the boy didn’t like that. What did he do 
but turn around and by a perfectly ungodly skill, made a 
caricature of Stockbridge out of the ruined sketch. Clever, 
what? It was a devilish thing; Stockbridge could never deny 
the likeness. Helen Saylor got mixed up in the thing, some¬ 
how; that’s awfully Helen Saylor, you know, and so Tony 
carried a vivid account of the affair in his column this morn¬ 
ing, and published the caricature right at the top! He took 
the trouble to say, Sonya, that the young beggar was a genius 
at cartooning. You know what that means!” 

“I wish he would say I was a genius,” said Magda. “I 
wonder if our red-headed young friend appreciates it. Tony 
Durand has made more than one reputation with a line like 
that. He’s in luck!” 

It suddenly dawned upon the company that they were neg¬ 
lecting one of their most distinguished companions. All 
during their babble, Mr. Gensler—Mr. Herman Gensler, pub¬ 
lisher—had quietly been devouring chicken sandwiches on 
toasted bread. It was Gensler’s way to be quiet. He was a 
millionaire who always knew what the public wanted. Some 
portions of the public knew, or thought they knew, what 
Gensler wanted. 

It was rumored that he wanted Helen Saylor. 


250 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


“Did you know about it, Mr. Gensler?” asked Masters, 
turning suavely toward the publisher. 

“I knew all about it,” announced Gensler. “Miss Saylor 
telephoned me this morning. She says the boy is a genius, 
but one funny picture don’t make a cartoonist in my office. 
Miss Saylor wants me to give him a chance. Well, maybe I 
will. Who can tell?” 

“Good Lord,” gasped Dangerfield Masters. “There they 
are now!” 

As it happened, Helen Saylor was following a waiter 
across the dining room, and behind her walked a red-haired 
young man with bold blue eyes. 

With a bow, the waiter gave them a table where they would 
be watched by all the dining room. 

“Do you know,” asked Helen lightly, “that you are an 
object of the most excited interest to everybody here?” 

He glanced skeptically over the dining room, then flushed 
red as his hair. It was true. Eyes were turned toward him 
everywhere. Never before had he been an object of interest; 
there was a thrill in him. 

“Why are they so interested in me?” he asked in bewilder¬ 
ment. 

Helen had known, ten minutes before, that he had not seen 
his sketch in the Sphere. 

“I have let them know you are a new genius that I have 
discovered,” she replied, in light evasion. 

He flushed again. 

“Why do you say that?” he asked quickly. 

“Because you are a genius,” insisted Helen, looking at him 
with her intense eyes. “I knew it when I saw you draw that 
picture last night. You are going to be famous!” 

Muscle and curve and ligament! Thigh and torso and the 
white swell of unmilked breasts! Was she jesting with him? 
Or had there been a fire in his strokes; a blaze in his lines? 


CHARLEY DRAWS A PICTURE 


251 


“Is every one here famous?” he asked. 

“Not all! But they all belong, if you know what I mean,” 
replied Helen, taking up the menu card. After they had 
ordered, Charley returned to his question. 

“But they are all dreamers?” he persisted. “They are all 
doing their work; the work they love to do?” 

“They are all living their own lives, if that is what you 
mean,” was Helen’s reply. 

“That is what I do mean,” he agreed enthusiastically. 
“That is the wonderful thing here. People live their own 
lives. They are free to express beauty as they see it. It was 
good of you to let me come!” 

She smiled at him, something maternal and tender coming 
into her eyes. 

“Where did you come from, Peter?” she asked. 

“What does that matter?” he countered quickly. “I had 
to be born somewhere. I am being re-born in New York. I 
am only a few weeks old!” 

She laughed. 

“I love you for that, Peter,” she told him. 

She would have said more, but they were interrupted by 
the approach of a short, well-groomed youth, who ran his 
hand through his brown curls and then extended it buoyantly 
toward Helen. 

“My dear,” he said easily, “the sight of you made me so 
hungry I had to come over and speak to you.” 

“Peter,” said Helen, “I want you to know this boy. He 
might be a genius; I haven’t decided yet. He is Mr. Emman¬ 
uel Cross, and he is only nineteen years old, and he’s married, 
and he’s a poet. If you don’t stop him, he’ll tell you that 
Goodley’s magazine published two or three of his little things 
with double page decorations by Harry Larnwood. He will 
have a book in the fall. Mannie, this is Mr. Peter Gaunt!” 

“I’ve been hearing about you, Gaunt,” said Mannie, shaking 


252 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


hands effusively. “From what every one says, you are going 
to be heard from a great deal before you get through.” 

“I don’t understand,” said Charley. “But I shall certainly 
look for your book.” 

“I’ll see that you get a copy,” promised Mannie happily. 
“Why don’t you and Helen run up to our country place for 
a week-end? Mrs. Cross would be delighted to have you; the 
sky’s the limit up at our place; you can do whatever you 
darn please.” 

“What do you generally darn please?” asked Charley, 
amazed at the young poet’s idiom. 

“Oh!” Mannie ran his hand through his dark curls once 
more. “We have enough hootch to last out the summer, and 
we have a lake! Helen knows!” 

“Mannie!” protested Helen, annoyed. 

“Nude bathing parties!” confided Mannie elaborately. 
“Every midnight when we have guests.” 

“May I ask, Mr. Cross, why you have nude bathing par¬ 
ties?” asked Charley sharply. 

“Mannie, I wish you had stayed where you were,” said 
Helen. 

“Oh, Gaunt, now don’t be naive. After three or four hours 
of hootch and dancing, there’s a real kick in it, you know!” 

Charley grinned quietly at the young man. There was a 
moment of silence. 

“Well,” said Mannie, “my lady friend will be wondering 
where her young swain has flown. Glad to have met you, 
Gaunt. Remember—you and Helen come up!” 

He shook hands solemnly with Charley, and sauntered 
away. 

“Peter,” said Helen, “were you shocked by that little fool?” 

“Not after I discovered he was not a poet,” replied Charley. 

“Oh, but he is, Peter. He writes beautiful sonnets.” 

“He is not a poet. While he was speaking, I saw a picture 


CHARLEY DRAWS A PICTURE 253 

of what he was speaking about. A party of drunken men 
and women, belching probably, with their bellies protruding, 
their flabby muscles sagging on their bones, splashing about 
in the wet blue of a midnight pool! Can’t you see? If he 
had only told me of the lake, and the gray-green shadows of 
the old trees! Perhaps one nude girl, lonely and shy, bathing 
under a lemon moon! I would crawl to his lake on bloody 
knees to see that, you understand?” 

Helen smiled. But she was thinking, “You are only three 
weeks old, Peter!” 

“Mannie has been drinking,” Helen said, after a pause. 
“Of course, every one doesn’t follow the example of his set. 
But that is the way some people insist on living nowadays.” 

It was just as well that his education be taken promptly 
in hand. 

“Haven’t you ever read of the freedom of the creative life; 
what used to be called the freedom of Bohemia? After all, 
they have a right to live their own lives; you did approve of 
that. The old conventions are breaking down, Peter; the 
process has been going on since the nineties.” 

Charley leaned forward, suddenly earnest. 

“I have read of the freedom of Bohemia,” he admitted. 
“But I have always regarded taste as the title deed to free¬ 
dom.” 

Fortunately the waiter brought their food, and the con¬ 
versation was interrupted. Secretly, Helen was a bit worried. 
This handsome youth, whose physical vitality so appealed to 
her, would present unexpected difficulties. He had not been 
in New York long enough to compromise his idealism with 
expediency. Helen was shrewd. She suspected Charley 
would be annoyed when he learned that his caricature had 
been published. He believed Helen’s admiration was for the 
first sketch; the one of the nude girl. Helen needed no clair¬ 
voyance to understand the crossing of their purposes. 

“The trouble is,” Charley resumed quietly, after the waiter 


254 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


left them, “the kind of freedom your gallant young friend 
Mannie craves is only a shoddy imitation of the nineties. 
People such as he, simply are the deformed grandchildren of 
those bright, wild years; they have inherited all of their 
license, and no blood-drop of their genius.” 

“Peter,” she said softly, “You talk awfully well, when you 
forget yourself. I think I shall decide to let you be a poet.” 
After a pause, she asked: “Have many women loved you?” 

He laughed and shook his head. A rich light came into 
his eyes; a light that was rich as the richness of a smile he 
loved. 

“But haven’t you had infatuations—affairs, you know?” 
Helen persisted. “Episodes that you thought were the real 
thing—while they lasted?” 

He thought of Constance, and the turn of his lips was 
grim. Across the stage of his memory passed that ridiculous 
moment in the park, when he broke their first kiss and their 
last; a grotesque pantomime. 

“No!” he protested. “I am sorry to disappoint you. I 
have not had such—affairs, you said. I did not want them. 
The affair I wanted was for eternity, and it must be the real 
thing while it lasted!” 

She shook her head. 

“You are dreadfully old fashioned, Peter.” 

“Perhaps. I certainly did not have infatuations. My 
affairs were all in the imagination. But that was not enough. 
I did want the real thing, you see. I wanted the real woman— 
Venus her very self. I looked for her everywhere. In the 
crowds I peered from one face to another—and all were dis¬ 
appointments. It sounds foolish, I know, but I was serious. 
Once only I was mistaken. At all other times a glance was 
enough. I never stopped looking; the search went on with 
the minutes, day by day—I was a beggar but if I had found 
her, she should have been mine!” 

Her eyes were twinkling. 


CHARLEY DRAWS A PICTURE 255 

“You went around looking at every woman you saw and 
rejecting them, one by one—just like that?” she teased. 

“Just like that!” 

“I think you are terribly conceited, Peter!” 

“There was not one worthy of an—affair,” he said 
decisively. 

“And so you never found her,” she sighed. 

“I never expected to find her, Helen. I was sure that she 
had died; Venus was dead; Aphrodite was at the bottom of 
the sea. There was no woman left in the world, I said, 
worthy of the kind of love I had to give. And then—last 
night-” 

Her eyes widened. She had met him last night in the art 
class! 

“Go on, Peter,” she whispered tensely, as his voice faltered. 

“Can you possibly understand, or believe me, Helen? 
Last night—I think—I found her!” 

Her blood was warm as red and living wine. She reached 
over, and her warm fingers closed around his hand. 

“Peter,” she murmured. “Dear Peter—let us wait until 
another time—and then I shall listen!” 

He glanced at her curiously. Was it possible she had mis¬ 
understood him? Could she possibly suppose- 

It was incredible. For an instant, he was tempted to tell 
her of Melodie, but something imperative sealed bis lips. 

It would have been a profanity. 

They fell to talking of the life and the people around them. 
Helen was inspired with a thrill of triumph and conquest. 
A man who had looked upon multitudes of women, searching 
for Venus, had told her he believed the long quest ended. 
Her cheeks burned and her eyes were candent with pleasure. 
Now she would be able to manage the conversation skillfully. 
Peter Gaunt must be adroitly handled, but Helen felt equal 
to the task. 


256 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


She felt that she understood him. 

“This boy,” she said to herself, “is an idealist who has 
some hard lessons ahead of him. But he will learn, quickly 
enough. One does in this town. He evidently has dreams of 
becoming a great artist. Of course, he doesn’t realize that 
he is a born cartoonist. He must learn that without getting 
his heart broken over it. Another case of Charlie Chaplin 
wanting to play Hamlet.” 

She smiled at him encouragingly. 

“I have been thinking of a very interesting thing you said 
last night,” she remarked brightly. “You remember—about 
the artist seeing into the soul of the model and painting that? 
It seems to me that is genius, and I think you have it, Peter; 
I think you have it in abundance.” 

He flushed happily. Praise was so rare; so sweet. 

“I do hope to do that in my pictures,” he confessed. 

Silently she found a menu card, blank on the back, and 
laid it in front of him. 

“Do something for me, will you, Peter?” she pleaded. 
“Please?” 

“I should like to please you, Helen.” 

“Then draw me one or two pictures on the back of this 
card. Just faces of people in this dining room. Here’s a 
pencil. For my sake, Peter!” 

“Why do you want me to do such a thing as that?” he 
demanded, aghast. “I’ve been looking at the faces of the 
people in this room. They are not pretty faces—too hard 
and fast and grimacing and artificial. Especially the women 
—for the women have a strength, and the men look weak, and 
that makes it worse. I would have to draw the souls reflected 
in their faces—and ugh! I like to draw beautiful things!” 

“Peter Gaunt! I do think you are the most obstinate and 
extraordinary person! ” 

“Well, why do you want me to do such a thing?” he 
repeated. 


CHARLEY DRAWS A PICTURE 


257 


“It’s a little secret, Peter. I’ll tell you all about it later, 
really I will. It might mean a great deal to—both of us, if 
you only would.” 

“I don’t like to draw pictures like that. I want to create 
beauty. I like to draw beautiful things. But for you—of 
course. What shall I draw?” 

“Let me see? There’s Gustav Freunt over there. He would 
do splendidly. Gus is an awfully good chap. He started out 
to write symphonies and sonatas and high-brow things like 
that, but he found out soon enough the American composer 
hasn’t a chance. He’s that tall, good-looking man with the 
boyish face over yonder.” 

Charley stared curiously at the man she had indicated. 
Suspicion as well as curiosity was in his gaze. 

“What does Gustav Freunt do now?” he asked distinctly. 

“He’s in the phonograph business. I think he’s called the 
exploitation director for the instrument, or something like 
that.” 

Charley’s glance became incensed. The man had sold out; 
that’s what he had done. He had pawned his dreams to the 
manufacturer of a phonograph. Fury gathered in Charley’s 
heart; a fury of reproach. He seized the pencil. 

“I shall draw his soul for you, Helen,” he promised bit¬ 
terly. “It will not be a pretty thing. The soul of a man who 
sold his dreams to an organ grinder.” 

As a man possessed; his eyes intent, his lips drawn back, 
exposing the teeth, Charley bent over the menu card and 
began to draw. 

For the moment he hated his model. This Gustav Freunt 
had abandoned art for the golden jingle of business. He 
had forsworn holy vows; he had rented his days and his 
nights for the selling of a music box. The man who could 
have brought down the songs of the angels to earth was now 
no more than a salesman. 


258 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


Stroke by stroke he began to draw eyes and ears and brow 
and the lips that shall sing no more; parts of the face of a 
man who pawned his dreams to an organ grinder. 

Eyes blinded with golden pieces. Ears stopped against the 
raptures of invisible choirs. Brow branded with the mark. 
Lips that shall sing no more. 

There was a frenzy in Charley’s fingers, and in his eyes a 
passion without mercy. As one posssessed; as a man in a 
trance of accusation, he began to draw; on the back of the 
menu card he began to draw eyes and ears and brow, and the 
lips that shall sing no more. 

He was lost in his task, unwitting of those about him, for¬ 
getful even of Helen Saylor. With furtive interest, she 
watched him at his beginning strokes. Soon a smile of satis¬ 
faction rose proudly to her lips. He did not observe, when 
she turned and beckoned. He did not guess that at the table 
yonder the eyes of Miriam Shaw, and Magda Marlowe 
Mather, and Dangerfield Masters, and Sonya Bellaire were 
watching him attentively, guessing what he was about. 

Nor did he observe that a man arose from their table and 
approached in obedience to Helen’s beckoning hand. She 
had summoned Gensler. 

“He is drawing Gus Freunt,” whispered Helen. “Now you 
shall see!” 

Gensler nodded. He was ready to see. No one in the 
room understood the situation so clearly as did Gensler. To 
the publisher, the conditions were not only very clear, but 
agreeable. Helen was infatuated with this red-headed young 
man. She wanted to interest Gensler in the young man. 
Very well! If the young man could draw, Gensler might help 
him. Perhaps the young man could draw. Perhaps he could 
not. If he could not, Gensler would do nothing. He was 
first and last a practical publisher, and he could do nothing 
for Helen’s young man if her young man had no remarkable 


CHARLEY DRAWS A PICTURE 


259 


talent. If, however, her young man did have talent, then 
Gensler was ready to make a bargain with her. He was a 
lonely man, was Gensler. He liked young and attractive 
women, and he had found Helen both young and attractive. 
If she were willing to console him a little in his loneliness, 
he would give the boy a chance. Gensler would not be jealous 
of the boy. A middle-aged man cannot expect everything. 

In silence, Gensler and Helen waited, while Charley drew, 
stroke by stroke, as a man possessed, the little portrait of a 
purchased soul. 

Because he found silence a strength and a salvation, Gensler 
was a silent man. He distrusted speech. When Charley 
finished his picture, Gensler intended to look at it silently, 
and he intended saying very little about it, even if it were 
good, until he was alone with Helen. 

With a short and vicious line, drawn down from the ear, 
Charley completed his sketch. 

“There,” he said, passing it to Helen. His hand was 
trembling. “See if I have drawn a face, or a soul!” 

Helen gave the picture one glance; then, with a low gasp 
and a smile exultant in triumph, she put the card into 
Gensler’s hand. 

“Now!” she cried. “What have you got to say about that?” 

The publisher stared at the picture. He put his free hand 
to the side of his face. His lips puckered and emitted a long, 
low whistle. 

“My God!” he cried. “This thing is criminally libelous!” 

Truth had broken his silence and extorted his confession. 
Truth was there in the picture. No one could misunderstand 
its shameful revelation. It was the portrait of a slave who had 
sold his own freedom for a warm bed and gruel. The blinded 
eyes were there, and the stopped up ears and the branded 
brow and the lips that could sing no more. The likeness was 
more than a likeness; the eyes were open, yet certainly blind; 


260 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


and the brow was smooth, and yet mysteriously and invisibly 
branded; the ears free, yet deafened and dead, and the lips 
unmarked, yet dumb. Invisible lines somehow cried out the 
truth; the soul was present in every stroke, patent and pitiful. 

“Mr. Gaunt,” said Gensler fervently, “I didn’t expect what 
Helen had said could be true. But it is true. This picture 
says something awful about that man. Now I know it! I’m 
—I’m glad I met you, Mr. Gaunt!” 

Charley felt a bit dazed. As he worked over the drawing, 
he had forgotten his surroundings. All that he had seen 
clearly was the model he hated and the card on which he had 
drawn. Everything else was blurred into an incoherence. 

Now he was emerging from the daze, but slowly. Helen 
was introducing him to some one. The some one was Mr. 
Gensler. Mr. Gensler was a publisher, one of the wealthiest 
and most influential men in New York. Mr. Gensler was 
much interested in Mr. Gaunt, and wanted to have a talk with 
him. As Charley’s mind cleared, he heard Helen saying: 

“I am having Peter up to my apartment for dinner to¬ 
night. Why don’t you drop in Gensler, and then we can all 
talk?” 

Gensler gave her a glance, charged with meaning. 

“I’ll telephone you later in the afternoon, if you’ll be 
home,” he said. “Maybe I can come!” 

Turning, he shook hands with Charley. 

“I hope I can see you to-night, Mr. Gaunt,” he said. “You 
know how to get character into a sketch, I’ll say that for 
you!” 

With another bow, the publisher returned to the curious 
group of Helen’s friends at the table across the aisle, where 
he was immediately bombarded with questions. 

Charley leaned nearer to Helen, his eyes glowing with 
surprise and gratitude. 

“Now I know why you asked me to draw that stupid pic¬ 
ture. Helen, you are being very good to me. I-” 


CHARLEY DRAWS A PICTURE 


261 


“You’ll surely come to-night, Peter? It will mean every¬ 
thing to your future—everything. There is nothing that man 
Gensler can’t do for you. And he will do it, too.” 

“Why should he bother to do anything for me?” 

“That,” smiled Helen bewilderingly, “is a mystery known 
only to me, Peter. But don’t you worry. I won’t let him 
stay long to-night. We’ll pack him off early—and then we’ll 
be just to ourselves.” 

Her pretty face was flushed; her eyes were shining, and 
when she gave him her hand, in parting, the flesh was warm, 
quivering and eager. Beautiful and desirable was Helen, as 
she gave her warm and eager hand into his, as they lingered 
on the sfdewalk; upon her, there was a glow of resolved 
decision. She would know what to say to Gensler when he 
telephoned. 

“To-night? At seven?” she asked him again. 

“To-night. At seven,” he promised. 

He was glad the luncheon was over. He was sorry he had 
been tricked into making a dinner engagement. Of course, it 
was important that he had impressed Gensler. But every¬ 
thing about it all had a practical aspect, and he was thinking 
of Melodie. 

The luncheon had not seemed to him anything like as 
important as Helen undoubtedly believed it to be. Subcon¬ 
sciously he felt there was something mistaken about it; a 
suspicion he could not define. Now that it was over, there 
seemed to be wings to his feet again. He could hasten to the 
last of the little wooden houses, forty-five seconds from 
Broadway. 

All that morning he had wanted to go to her, but he had 
decided that an afternoon call might please her better; after 
a late night in the theater, she would want to sleep. He was 
glowing with joy, not because of Helen or of Gensler, but 
because he was on his way at last to Melodie. 

The piper’s tune in his soul seemed to sing to him that not 


262 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


Gensler, but Melodie, could open the gateway wide into the 
garden of his desires. 

Yet, as he walked down Sixth Avenue, he realized that 
Gensler might prove a help. He was not in a position to dis¬ 
regard practical assistance, was he? He must not be a fool 
altogether. That he should be recognized so quickly, he 
regarded as fortunate but not extraordinary. This was because 
he believed, not only in himself, but in the island and its 
inhabitants. This place to which he had fled was a refuge 
and an asylum where one who had beauty to manifest would 
find a ready welcome. He thrilled with gratitude toward 
Helen. Some day he would be able to repay her in kind, 
perhaps; whether he would accept her help or not, she meant 
to be kind to him. 

Suddenly he felt guilty. He remembered the lunatics. 
They, too, had been kind. Since he had been in New York, 
he had scarcely thought of them. Then he smiled confidently. 
They would understand. Old Doctor Tanneyday, Leverton of 
the thousand faces, Mr. Blessings. And D. D. D.! 

Where was he now? Would he not be proud of the ready 
welcome his pupil was finding on the island? 

He had come again to the street of the little wooden houses. 
A doubt of a new kind attacked his thoughts. He had seen 
this girl, this Melodie, but twice in his life; once in the dark 
madness of a flight in the night, and then at a distance in a 
theater. Was it not more than possible he was acting like a 
fool? After all, might not his fond and romantic imagina¬ 
tion be playing him tricks; laying a dismal trap for him? 

But the sweet piper Whim played on, and he followed like 
a heedless child. 

“Nobody else but I could think it possible,” he replied to 
his doubts. “But I do think it is possible. I think it is true!” 

Here was the little window, with its modest picture exposed 
for sale; the house where Melodie lived. There was some¬ 
thing good-natured and friendly about that window; some- 


CHARLEY DRAWS A PICTURE 263 

thing of welcome in the old shutters with their frayed green 
paint; something benignant and tolerant and kind. 

‘‘Queer,” said Charley to himself, as he walked down the 
little steps that led to the basement door, “queer and odd. 
I remember saying once that I felt as if I had never been 
home. That little window-” 

He rapped on the door. Again he heard the distant barking 
of a dog, and the voice of Alexander Watts calling impa¬ 
tiently. Then the door opened, and the eyes of the old man 
peered out. 

“God help us, Mr. Gaunt! It’s you!” exclaimed Watts. 
“I’m glad you’ve come, sir. I won’t ask you in; tell you why 
in a minute. Where did you get to, last night, Mr. Gaunt? 
You should have seen the little girl, sir. She cried like a 
baby, and she carried on as only she knows how to carry on. 
Why didn’t I take your address down? she wanted to know. 
Didn’t I know you were a stranger in New York and might 
get lost? If she asked me that once, Mr. Gaunt, she asked me 
a hundred times. She laid me out, Mr. Gaunt, for a damned 
old fool. God help us, sir, where did you get to?” 

Charley wrung the old man’s hand. 

“Where is she now?” he begged. “I’ve got so much I 
want to say to her.” 

“She’s at the theater, worse luck. There’s a matinee to-day, 
but that’s why I didn’t invite you in, Mr. Gaunt. Go on up 
there! Know what the little girl really thought? She thought 
she wasn’t fine enough for you; you were a gentleman; she 
said she could see that with one eye shut, and she guessed you 
thought better of it and that’s why you didn’t come back. If 
she was to find you at the stage door when she comes out-” 

Charley shook his hand again. 

“She’ll find me there,” he promised fervently. “An revoir, 
Mr. Watts.” 

“Good luck and God bless you, Mr. Gaunt. And don’t you 
disappoint that little girl this time!” 




CHAPTER THIRTY 


WOMAN 

Charley decided not to attend the matinee performance in 
the Summer Garden. He had no mind to taint his expectant 
mood with the tinsel and jangle of a revue , nor to spoil the 
memory of Melodie in the fountain by looking upon it so 
soon again. Now it was a remembrance of utter perfection. 

Upon a hill, near to a stream, in the midst of Central Park 
he found a bench, and there he decided to linger during the 
intervening hours. As he lingered there he invited honestly 
the sneers and doubts of his common sense. But they came 
no more; all the strings of his soul were vibrating with the 
music of the piper’s magic tune. 

He yearned for her with a longing altogether impractical 
and nonsensical, eager for the sluggish hours to pass on into 
eternity. 

It may have been odd that scarcely once during his lonely 
waiting did he remember Gensler, or even Helen Saylor. 

She came out of the stage door alone. 

Her little hat was a shy spring green, to match the emerald 
of her suit, and the collar of her waist was lavender. And 
her hair was red as morning flame, and her lips scarlet as 
the petals of the nasturtium, and her eyes violet pools of 
light. 

As she stepped into the street, he strode toward her quickly 
and pronounced her name. Her eyes lifted quickly and met 
his blue gaze, earnest and intense and rejoicing. 

264 


WOMAN 


265 


“You!” she gasped. “Old trooper!” 

His hand had found hers and held it fast; so small a hand, 
and so cold, and yet the first touch of her was a caress. The 
loiterers around the stage door gaped at them; they were at 
the entrance, saying not a word, as if each was dumb, looking 
into the eyes of the other. 

And then there was a wetness in her eyes while she smiled; 
the arch, swift smile that he remembered; the baffling smile 
so full of meaning that he could not understand, hut only love 
and reverence. 

“I’m—I’m glad’’ she said. “Uncle Alex told me-” 

“Melodie,” he said impetuously, “I’ve got so much to say 
to you. Can’t you come with me now—anywhere—just you 
and I?” 

She put her hand through his arm and they walked on down 
the shabby street, away from Broadway. Not until they came 
to a crossing did she speak. 

“It’s great to see you again,” she smiled. “I’ve thought so 
much about you—that night, and the cheese sandwiches and 
everything. I’d like—to go with you right now a lot. More 
than you’d think, I suppose. But I just can’t. I’ve got to go 
somewhere else.” 

“And I couldn’t possibly go with you, Melodie?” 

She turned her eyes toward him inquiringly, as if she would 
explore the private recesses of his heart. 

“I’m—I’m afraid you can’t,” she replied with difficulty. 

“Melodie,” he protested, “I can’t bear to part from you 
just when I’m so happy at finding you. I can’t lose sight of 
you now. Isn’t there any way-” 

Her eyes were still upon him searchingly, occupied with 
their inquiry. 

“I wonder if you would understand?” she mused aloud. 

“I would understand anything for you, Melodie—if you’d 
only not send me away!” 

“You see,” she explained reluctantly, “this is the visiting 



266 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


day at the hospital. It had to fall on matinee day, I guess. 
But they’ll let me see him, as a special favor, after the show, 
because they know I can’t come the regular hours. So you 
see-” 

“Melodie, is it the man who brought you to New York that 
is sick? Is that why you think I shouldn’t go?” 

His voice was brittle. He saw her hand touch her cheek 
in a futile little gesture of pain. 

“That was why—I tried to go back home,” she said, with 
a quick breath. “He—the man you asked about—he died last 
week down in—Arizona.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that. It was a 
caddish thing to ask—please forgive me and forget that I 
asked it. But can’t you understand? I want to be with you, 
Melodie,—I need you!” 

The violet eyes stared at him; the scarlet lips trembled. 

“If you’ll promise to understand,” she said, “you can come 
along with me.” 

Careless of the crowds, he caught her slim, cold hand and 
kissed it. 

“Melodie,” he promised, “I shall understand—anything.” 

An unreasonable content was in Charley Turner’s heart, 
merely that he was with her. They did not speak as they 
walked uptown together, crossing through the park, sweet 
with the smells of spring. 

He was thinking: 

“Why did I say she was cheap? I was a monster to have 
said so. There is something rich and dear in her. Something 
unreachable! I’m glad! I’m glad! I’m glad!” 

Almost before they knew it, they had come to a red brick 
building, a block in length; a gaunt, harsh, unlovely place, 
with many windows, over which the chastening shadows of 
the late afternoon hovered somehow pityingly. Into a long. 


WOMAN 267 

cool corridor they walked, still silent and still content; up 
two wide flights of stairs, and there Melodie paused. 

Presently a woman, rustling in her starched blue linen, 
met them. She smiled at Melodie as at one she knew and 
liked. 

“You are just in time,” she whispered. At Melodie’s 
glance, she turned toward Charley. “Yes, your friend may 
come too!” 

Only a short walk down the hallway and they had come 
to a closed door. With a sign, the nurse cautioned them to 
remain there, and then she opened the door and passed in, 
leaving it open after her. 

Charley looked through the door, down a strange and 
unexpected vista. This was evidently a ward for crippled 
children; the last thing he would have anticipated. Never 
had he thought about children, and, least of all, crippled 
children. Somehow, they were alien to his world. Now 
here, before his eyes, the new vista opened up; a vista of little 
white beds, each with its own small sufferer; a lane of little 
sick boys, with big, hurt eyes looking at him through the 
shadows. 

“What is this place?” he whispered. 

“It’s the Hospital for Crippled Children,” Melodie told 
him softly. “Poor little kids! Just think! They’re just 
exactly like other little kids—in here.” 

She touched her heart nervously with her hand. 

“They want to run around just like anybody else. Every 
kid in that room would like to play baseball and chase cats. 
But they can’t. There they are—and there they’ve got to 
stay. Some of them with tuberculosis spines, tuberculosis 
hips, rickety kids, clamped all day, twenty-four hours a day, 
to an iron frame—when they want to run and jump like the 
other kids. It’s just plain hell! Listen, old trooper . . . 
it’s all so what that artist friend of mine called it—bucolic! 
I’m afraid I’m going to cry!” 


268 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


She put her cold little hand in his. The voice of the nurse, 
calm and serene, was raised, intoning old words. And with 
the lifting of her voice was lifted the eager, plaintive treble 
of the voices of the little boys, clamped to their iron frames 
in the white beds. 

“Now I lay me down to sleep 
I pray the Lord my soul to keep. 

If I should die before I wake 
I pray the Lord my soul to take. 

And this I ask for Jesus sake 
Amen!” 

There was a moment’s reverent hush, and then the nurse 
beckoned toward Melodie. With a rush, Melodie ran fleetly 
down the aisle, toward one white bed in the rear. Charley 
remained near the door, watching. He saw Melodie bend 
over the form lying in the bed; he saw two thin little arms 
reach up and twine around her neck; he saw her lift the 
child and nestle it close to her, a baby cheek laid against 
her face. 

The twilight glow was upon them, as she stood by the open 
window. He did not need to ask. He knew that in Melodie’s 
arms lay the flesh of her own flesh, crippled child of the love 
she had given the man who died. 

Strange and terrifying miracle! Amazing and bewildering 
woman! Last night you were Aphrodite, rising gracefully 
from the sea! Now mother and child! Red Magdalen and 
white Madonna! 

Holy mystery that is here unshrouded! 

There was a tightness in his throat and a wet mist swim¬ 
ming in his eyes. Her smile! Melodie was smiling down 
gently upon the little body in her arms. The arch, swift 
smile that came and vanished so soon. 

Might he not now understand the glory and the mystery 
of her smile? It was at once Mary’s smile and Magdalen’s, 
nor could either possess it alone. This moment was a revela- 


WOMAN 269 

tion; for Mary was once Aphrodite to the carpenter who 
wooed her—was it not so, even in Bethlehem? 

He seemed to hear that inner voice speaking. Thrill and 
tremble, dreamer, as you look at this, for now it has been 
shown unto you. Look upon it with those occult eyes you 
boast! At last you know woman—mingled and made together 
out of Mary and Magdalen. Paint the picture if you can, for 
Truth is here to be witnessed and made manifest; put it on 
canvas now, if you can, in muscle and curve and ligament 
and smile, twin mystery and beauty and wonder of the ages, 
for this is Woman as God has made her, and everlasting unto 
everlasting waits upon its rendering. 

Paint, dreamer, if you can, the Madonna Melodie. 


CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE 


THE WONDERFUL THING 

In her studio apartment, on the sky floor of a lower Fifth 
Avenue hotel, Helen Saylor was waiting for the coming of 
the red-haired young idealist for whom she had conceived a 
sudden and violent physical attraction. 

She recognized, however, that no episode of her colorful 
history had meant quite so much to her as this Peter Gaunt 
and his extraordinary dreams. All of the men with whom 
she had been infatuated had been different, but Peter Gaunt 
was a new man altogether, a new kind of man, and the 
tumult in Helen’s heart was a new kind of tumult, stranger 
to her memory, and containing some promise of permanence. 

Having fallen in love with him, promptly and completely, 
as had been her way, she was beginning to realize that her 
own feelings, too, were different. 

That, undoubtedly, increased her annoyance at his tardi¬ 
ness. Already it was half past seven, by the ticking of the 
Sevres china clock on the mantel. Why should Peter be late? 
They had agreed solemnly and faithfully together on the 
time. Seven o’clock! They had said it, as if it were a cove¬ 
nant. What was the matter with him? Men who had an 
appointment with Helen Saylor were never tardy. 

Moreover, she was impatient to tell him exciting and 
pleasant news. Gensler had telephoned. Also, Gensler had 
been to see her. He could not remain to talk to Peter, but 
that did not matter; from Helen’s viewpoint, it was better, and 
everything had been arranged to Gensler’s satisfaction. Peter 

270 


THE WONDERFUL THING 271 

would be astonished at what Helen could do for him, would 
do for him, through this tractable Gensler. Peter was to call 
on Gensler in the morning, and he would be given a position, 
drawing caricatures for one of Gensler’s publications. His 
salary would be one hundred dollars a week at the start. 
After that, fame, power, wealth, everything would be within 
the reach of his hands. 

Why didn’t he come? The silent little Japanese maid came 
and went, glancing reproachfully at the waiting table. All 
was in readiness; why didn’t he come? Helen tapped her 
foot nervously; she lit a cigarette, puffed once and threw the 
thing in the fireplace. 

Damn! 

She had contrived most carefully a proper mise en scene. 
They were to dine together in a room of shadows. Everything 
else in the room was obliterated in the masses of shadows; the 
soft lamps on the table would give a light to their faces, 
leaving nothing around them but those friendly shadows, 
purple, warm, improbable. 

In this there was shrewd design. Otherwise, Peter might 
have been disappointed, or, perhaps, distracted. The low 
divan, the swinging censer with its coiling smoke, the ebony 
idol with its offering of cherry blooms, the dragon rug, the 
inlaid apparatus of the hooka, might not have appealed to 
him. For most of Helen’s visitors, these properties of an 
oriental stage setting were gratifying; they satisfied the thirst 
for atmosphere. Helen was clever enough to surmise that 
Peter was different; the more she left to his imagination, the 
happier they might both be. 

Anything might be imagined in those shadows. 

She had been planning phrases which she believed would 
woo him. 

“Let us eat together, Peter, of the figs of the Bo tree,” was 
one on which she counted especially. It was the kind of 
thing she felt certain to impress him. “My soul was born in 


272 BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

a banyan tree,” was another. She had read both of them 
somewhere. 

To her attirement, she had given careful thought. There 
was a gown which she had had designed for a dance in one 
of the Village halls; a Bagdad girl’s costume, full of the 
ravishment of the East; trimmed with the bangles of bar¬ 
barism. When she wore it, Helen put clinking jewels in her 
ears; precious bands jingled on her wrists, and the cling- 
clong of her anklets made a song of her feet. 

She decided against that costume. Peter Gaunt would 
never like her in it. Helen did not know how she knew this, 
but her intuition was sufficient. Instead, she chose a negligee, 
simple and yet seductive, too; more like a veil than a gown, 
concealing much, and promising even more. Thus, arrayed 
in cuerpo, her raiment should beguile his imagination. 

In her year abroad, Helen had flirted in capitals where 
love making is an art. She had become an expert in coquetry 
—having tantalized the frock-coated bandits of the Bourse, 
the pompous magnificoes of Venice, the hidalgoes of Madrid, 
and even the solemn visaged merchants of Vienna. 

But she was not sure about this red-headed young idealist. 
Here, to-night, in the shadows, anything might happen. She 
hoped it would. She was not sure. He was the first ever to 
keep her waiting. 

Why didn’t he come? 

When his knock came finally at her door, it was almost 
eight o’clock. Helen saw at once that he was not himself; 
that something tremendous had excited him. There was an 
incoherence in his eyes, an hysteria in the very feel of his 
hand, as if his body, indeed, was in her room, as he had 
promised, but his mind and soul had tarried whence he came. 

“Oh, Peter, I’m so glad you came. I was so worried about 
you, dear. And I’ve wonderful news for you—perfectly won¬ 
derful. Gensler has been here. He couldn’t wait to see you, 


THE WONDERFUL THING 


273 


but that doesn’t matter. I guess we’re neither of us very sorry 
about that. But every thing is settled, Peter—Gensler is 
going to do for you anything I want him to. Isn’t that 
wonderful?” 

“Of course it is!” he smiled mechanically. “Perfectly so. 
Yes. Gensler, of course. He will do anything for me, will 
he? That is wonderful news, Helen. Of course it is.” 

“But Peter, you don’t seem glad. I don’t think you realize 
what it means to you. It means you are going to be— 
famous!” 

“That is wonderful news, Helen. Yes. I am a thousand 
times obliged about that. I suppose I seem rather stupid 
about it. Of course. Yes. But so much has happened since 
I’ve seen you to-day—oh, so much, so much. It’s incredible. 
It’s unbelievable. Gensler—yes. Gensler will do anything 
for me, will he? Well, there’s a very great deal I shall want 
him to do, then. A great deal—so many unbelievable things 
have happened to-day. I-” 

“Sit right down there, Peter. That’s a good boy. You are 
all excited about something, and I’m so glad for you about 
it, even if I don’t know about it yet. If wonderful things 
have been happening to you, I shall forgive you for being an 
hour late for my dinner. And if the soup is cold, and the 
dinner burned, we shall not care. Your dinner-” 

“Dinner! I’ve had my dinner!” 

“Peter!” 

“It sounds terrible! I know! You’ll think me a cad and 
all that. I’m terribly sorry—but I couldn’t, wouldn’t have 
done otherwise for the world. This moment I am in a very 
daze of happiness, Helen. You must understand. You are 
the kind of woman that can understand—I know that. If I 
had been invited to the first Eucharist to-night, I should have 
stayed where I was—in Childs’!” 

“In Childs’!” 


274 BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

“Yes! Yes! In Childs’! It was wonderful! We had 
wheat cakes!” 

“Wheat cakes!” 

“With honey! Nothing could have been so wonderful! 
Better than pomegranates out of the Garden of Eden; sweeter 
than lotus leaves! They might have stewed me oysters in the 
juices of pears; mixed me curries hot as the wind of India, 
served me the impossible dishes of the Chinese emperor— 
bah for all that! I have had wheat cakes at Childs’!” 

“Peter, what has come over you?” 

“It was wonderful, Helen—wonderful!” 

She sat back and stared at him silently. The maid was 
removing his soup; he had not touched that, or the fruit. 
What was happening here? Was he just an ignorant boor, 
after all? Or was he mad? Or what- 

“Can’t you enlighten me about this wonderful thing?” she 
asked lightly. “Surely there must have been some other 
attraction beside the—did you say wheat cakes?” 

“Venus, the Mother of God, had dinner with me,” he re¬ 
plied, suddenly taking a devilish delight in tormenting her. 
He had sensed her antagonism, and was ready to meet it. 

She was aghast, outraged, and a little frightened. 

“I am afraid I don’t understand.” 

The hurt note in her voice broke his displeasure, and he 
was instantly contrite. 

“I know I sound like a raving fool; forgive me,” he 
pleaded. “I know I am a raving fool. But this means so 
much to me—this wonderful thing. All my life I have sought 
and sought and sought, and to-night I have found. Found, 
Helen! Think what that must mean to a man who has always 
been seeking and who has never found anything before. I 
am just a quivering mass of thrills as I sit here—I don’t 
want to eat any of these tempting dishes you have before me. 
I hunger for—wheat cakes!” 

“What it is you have found?” she asked dully. 


THE WONDERFUL THING 


275 


“Venus! Aphrodite! Mary, the Mother of God, and Mag¬ 
dalen, Queen of Love, sat across the table from me in Childs’ 
not an hour ago. And to think that all my life I have looked 
for her—but I never found her, of course, because I did not 
know what an ideal woman was like. Now I know. And 
now I have found her—Woman, complete, think of that, 
Helen—Woman, complete, as God has made her to be, eating 
wheat cakes with me in Childs’. I may love her, too; there 
is no mistake about that; we love each other. Think of that; 
I may love her through eternity, and it will be the real thing 
while it lasts, and loving her I may publish her beauty on 
canvas, so that the world may love her, too. After I have 
made that picture, the world will know what an ideal woman 
is like; every man will know what to seek, and every man 
shall find Venus for himself. Isn’t that wonderful?” 

She brushed her hand lightly across her eyes. 

“Go on, Peter,” she faltered. 

“Do you understand my ravings? I mean that I have 
actually found her. I have found what Woman means, what 
she actually is, at last. That is the wonderful thing that 
thrills me now—I am on fire about it; my flesh is flaming; 
I feel I am being consumed. My blood is like a torrent of 
fire, scorching me all over. I can’t be normal and natural 
and polite, Helen, on a night like this—can I? You wouldn’t 
expect me to, would you? I knew I could count on you 
understanding and sympathizing with me. And this man, 
Gensler. What can he do for me? I want to paint that 
picture. I’ve got to learn how to paint; every moment, every 
hour for years I’ve got to work, work, work, until I am strong 
enough to paint it as it should be painted. I mustn’t lose 
time. What will he do? Will he lend me money while I 
study and work, and learn how to paint such a picture as 
that? Do you think he will do that for me? That is what I 
want Gensler to do. If he believes in me, he will invest in 


276 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


me. That is all I ask—he shall not lose a penny in the 
transaction. Will he do it?” 

All around them shadows—the lamps lighting their faces; 
his white with enthusiasm; Helen’s curiously pale. This was 
a shock. She was not the Venus he had found last night. 
She—oh, it was absurd, humiliating. She had been an utter 
fool. Yet there he was, so vital, so buoyant, so full of the 
call of the man to woman! And something else was in him, 
too—something that awoke within her a stirring of buried 
and beautiful memories. 

“Peter,” she said crisply, “I am afraid your enthusiasm is 
running away with you. Take a glass of water, and sit silent 
there, and listen to me. You are all worked up over some 
great dream you have seen. Now listen to me. I know the 
game in New York, and I know how it is played. This is not 
the Renaissance. Painters do not do things to-day as they did 
when Da Vinci was doing the Mona Lisa. People are more 
practical to-day; this is a practical age. I am glad—very 
glad, Peter—that you think you have found your ideal 
woman. I hope you are not deceived in her. But even if 
you have found her, and you are not deceived in her—what 
can you do with some fanciful idea of painting a great 
picture of her? Every artist fancies that of his lady fair. 
It is natural and beautiful. But this is a practical world, 
Peter. There is not the remotest chance in the world that 
Gensler, or any one else, will stake you while you learn to 
paint, on the chance that you would do a good picture and 
be able to pay them back. The chances are all against your 
ever doing it, but then, you may. I do believe in you, Peter. 
But there isn’t any one left in the world who would be your 
patron on that chance. It simply isn’t being done, and hasn’t 
been for many years, Peter!” 

She paused, and studied his face. He was looking at her, 
his face telling no tales of what he was thinking. 

“Now, do be sensible, Peter, and don’t be hurt at what I 


THE WONDERFUL THING 


277 


am going to say. Nothing can keep you back, if you will 
only be practical. Gensler is interested in you. He believes 
you have a great deal of talent. He is ready to put you on 
his staff. That is a good fortune almost beyond belief. I 
was able to do that for you, because—well, I was able to do 
it. And I did believe in your ability. But Gensler doesn’t 
want you to paint for him. He wants you to become a car¬ 
toonist for him—there! That’s out!” 

“A cartoonist ?” 

“Yes!” 

Charley stood up at the table and glared down at her. 

“Be precise!” he said coldly. 

“He wants you to draw for him—faces, caricatures, like the 
one you did of Stockbridge last night at the art class, and the 
one of Gus Freunt. He will pay you one hundred dollars a 
week if you do that for him—a hundred dollars a week, and 
who knows where you will be before you get through? You’ll 
be riding around in your Rolls-Royce some day!” 

“And what, precisely, is a Rolls-Royce?” 

“Why, Peter, of course you know that. It’s a very ex¬ 
pensive car.” 

“I do not wish to ride. Can’t you understand that, Helen? 
I do not wish to dine at the Onandaga, or ride in a Rolls- 
Royce, or prosper in any degree. I do not wish to get drunk 
and bathe in a pool, or sell thumpy mechanical pianos, and 
I will not draw ugly pictures for one hundred dollars a week, 
no, and not for one hundred thousand dollars a week!” 

“Peter! Don’t be melodramatic about it!” 

“Compromise! Bargain! Go, young man, and draw hands 
in the antique class! No!” 

They were facing each other. In his eyes was the angry 
light that had been there when he drew on the menu card 
at noon. 

“Helen,” he said tensely, “as I look at you there, I seem to 
see you, not as a woman who has tried in her own way to 


278 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


serve me, but as the red symbol of a terrible truth. You are 
old as the ages, out of Egypt! I seem to see you holding 
out your hands to me, enticing me, beguiling me, making me 
earnest promises of warm delight. Your eyes call, and your 
hands and your parted lips; you entreat me to sell you my 
soul and betray the god that commands my service. I can¬ 
not yield. You are the old harlot of the world; I must leave 
my cloak in your hands and run!” 

“You vile beast!” she screamed. 

“You may not understand me now, but some day you will. 
I had no wish to hurt you. You meant me no harm; you 
wanted only to be kind. But you are asking me to sell my 
birthright. I dare not fashion ugliness, when I behold beauty! 
I must be faithful; I must paint my picture!” 

“Your picture!” she sneered shrilly. “Your damned fool 
idea! I think you’re crazy! You’re a lunatic, that’s what 
you are! What does the world care for your old picture? 
You’ll find out. There’s no room for that sort of thing in 
the world to-day, you poor fool. I got you a chance you 
couldn’t have got for yourself in a hundred years—and you 
throw it away for an empty dream!” 

“I do!” he said quietly, finding his hat. 

She rushed across the floor, and thrust her hot face close 
to his. 

“Stop and think!” she cried huskily. “Don’t be a fool!” 

“I cannot think!” he replied. “I feel—I must run!” 

“You’ll starve!” she cried, stamping her foot. “You’ll see 
what becomes of your dreams!” 

“I may starve,” he replied, his hand on the knob of her 
door. “But my dream shall not starve. You can put a 
dreamer in a pit, but as there is night and morning, you 
cannot cage his dream!” 

“We shall see!” she leered. 

“We shall see!” he agreed. 

The door closed behind him, and he was gone. 


CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO 


A PRECIOUS FOOL 

It was an utterly indefensible thing that he had done to Helen 
Saylor. 

By the time Charley had reached the avenue, he realized 
this. The wind of the young spring night quickly altered 
his mood. There was no resentment left in him. In her 
rooms, he had hotly resented her attitude. She had entreated 
him to draw ugly pictures for Gensler! The thought, even 
now, reddened his temples. If he had urged her to become 
a strumpet, would she not have been angry? 

That was what her proposal had meant to him. If he were 
to make ugly pictures, while his soul yearned to express the 
beauty it had seen, he would be prostituting his dreams, at a 
price. Better to count bills in John Strickler’s brush factory 
than to yield to such a compromise. 

Yet he was touched with remorse at the insolence he had 
displayed toward Helen. The situation reminded him aus¬ 
terely of the afternoon on which he had thrust Constance 
Lane from his arms, because he had tasted her lipstick. 
Strange that then he had felt no remorse. A streak of distant 
remorse was in him now for Helen Saylor not alone, but for 
Constance and even for Clara. What was happening to him? 

Was it any wonder, after all, that Helen Saylor refused to 
take his dreams seriously? Who would? To do the beauti¬ 
ful thing he meant to do, he would need the brush of Da 
Vinci, the palette of Velasquez, the white hand of Raphael. 

279 


280 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


Helen had reminded him that this was the twentieth century. 
And he had not yet begun to learn how to paint! 

He grinned into the darkness of the little park with a 
cheerful and unfathomed impudence. For this decision to 
cling fast to his fancies, now reiterated, his mind was not 
responsible; it could only acquiesce to a greater governor. 
The voice of his impulse ruled. Upon him there was an 
inexorable certainty of repose. Never had the mandate of his 
soul been more distinctly uttered. To these dreams he must 
cling. What if he did starve, as Helen had predicted? They 
were worth starving for. The mists of incoherence had rolled 
off; at last he could see. 

His brain was like a crystal. Everything was clear; beauti¬ 
fully distinct. For a long time he had stood impatiently on 
a threshold, beating against a dark door. Now the door was 
opened and he was looking through. 

He had found his dream woman. All the rest of it had 
come with that sweet miracle. In those old days of hopeless 
dreaming, he had smiled at himself, not believing her pos¬ 
sible. What an altogether different creature he had imagined 
her from the rest of women! There was no one like her. In 
her there was something of everything beautiful. This 
gracious woman of his musings and his meditations—she had 
been all woman, intensely and absolutely feminine. Her 
body was exquisitely rounded, inclined toward slenderness, 
but with full, enticing breasts. A face languorously sweet, 
yet vitally alive. Hair of sunset red. 

“Too good to be true!” he had said to himself. To him her 
dream face had been as music. 

And now he had found her. On a train, riding on a dark 
flight, he had discovered her. Was this not joy enough for 
him to forgive even Helen Saylor? How could she have met 
his transport and his exaltation? 

This wonderful Melodie! He loved her—with what cours¬ 
ing, throbbing and precious tenderness he loved her! Rising 


A PRECIOUS FOOL 281 

from the water she had come; for him the sea had given up 
its beautiful dead. 

To him she had disclosed the rare secret of her sex; the 
mystery and charm and wonder that is woman, at once Venus 
and Madonna. Hitherto men had separated this mystery 
that God had made one in flesh and mind and spirit. For 
him, for Charley Turner, the brush clerk, the lunatic; for 
Peter Gaunt, the man who was but three weeks old; the man 
that had been reborn on the rocky island of dreams; for him 
was reserved a task noble and privileged. He was to paint 
a picture which should unite in a single depiction, perhaps 
in a single stroke, this dual amazement. 

Presently Charley rose from the bench and started walking 
northward with long, eager steps. He had come to a practi¬ 
cal decision. There must be some means by which he could 
earn a living agreeably, while he learned to paint. He would 
go to the little wooden house, just forty-five seconds from 
Broadway, and ask the advice of old man Watts. He know 
art intimately, he loved Melodie, and he would surely listen. 

The old man was truly glad to see him again. In the little 
basement room they sat down together, and Charley came 
directly to the point. It was an impetuous narrative, full of 
native eloquence. For nearly an hour he talked, while Watts 
gravely smoked pipefuls of tobacco, exclaiming every now and 
then, “God bless us, Mr. Gaunt! God help us all!” 

With increasing wonder, the old man heard the tale. His 
faded eyes brightened as the story grew, and now and then 
he chuckled sagely. 

“I wonder,” he remarked, after a solemn pause, “if you 
realize what a precious fool you are!” 

He sucked his pipe meditatively. 

“A precious fool,” he repeated, with increasing conviction. 
“Full of—full of—God help us, I don’t know what you are 
full of, young man. But you’re full of it! Do you know 
what you are up against? Your art eduction should have 


282 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


begun ten years ago. Do you seriously believe that at your 
time of life you can learn to be a painter, big enough to do 
a picture like this you’ve been telling me about?” 

Charley nodded. 

“And then you complicate matters by arguing that you are 
in love with my little Melodie?” 

“I don’t argue it. I know it, Mr. Watts.” 

“How can you know it?” demanded the old man, suddenly 
petulant. “You lay down these things as if they were gospel. 
They’re not gospel; nothing like it. And even if you did 
know it, what about her? How do you know she loves you, 
or ever will love you? That’s what you haven’t told me yet!” 

Charley stood up and looked down into the old man’s face. 

“We—we do!” he said earnestly. “We do love each other. 
It is in her eyes, the way she looks at me. It is on her lips, 
when she smiles. Oh, Mr. Watts, I know it all sounds pre¬ 
posterous if you want to look at it like John Strieker would 
look at it. It isn’t reasonable, or sensible, I know. But it’s 
true. That is the wonderful thing about it. It’s—all true!” 

“A case of love at first sight,” said the old man sar¬ 
castically. 

“Now look here, Mr.-” 

“Now you look here, Mister! You came to me. I didn’t 
come to you! You came to me with the wildest ideas I ever 
heard from any young man in all my born days. Don’t you 
get excited with me. You sit down in that chair and listen 
and keep quiet. There’s one or two things you don’t seem to 
understand or appreciate. The first thing you want to get 
under that red thatch of yours is that Melodie is dearer to 
my old heart than anything else in the world. She’s made 
one mistake, if you can call it that, and I don’t want to see her 
make another. I don’t intend to see her heart broken, even 
if that meant you painted the most wondreful picture ever 
made! I love that little girl as if she were my very own. 
It’s her I’m thinking about now! You say she loves you. 


A PRECIOUS FOOL 


283 


Maybe so, maybe not! I’ll have to hear what she says about 
that. But suppose she does. What are you going to do about 
it? You can’t marry her. You’re a married man, and, if I 
want to call you that, you’re an escaped lunatic! Am I to 
entrust Melodie to a man who ran away from a wife and an 
insane asylum?” 

“You know I am sane,” replied Charley huskily. “And as 
for marriage, why can’t we be married? My old self is dead. 
I am a new man altogether. Who would ever know?” 

“It’s risky,” mused the old man glumly. “It’s bigamy!” 

“Bah!” cried Charley, with a snap of his fingers. “No one 
will ever know except we three!” 

“You would tell her?” 

“Of course!” 

“Well, if she is willing to marry you, knowing all that, 
nothing else could stop her anyway!” 

“Besides all that,” he resumed, “I don’t think a girl like 
Melodie ought to waste herself on an adventurer who talks 
like a wild man!” 

“You’re damned unfair!” cried Charley. 

“I’m nothing of the kind, Mr. Gaunt. I’m simply using my 
common sense. You ask me to believe you are a genius—and 
you don’t even know how to paint!” 

“But-” 

“You are full of buts. And you still haven’t answered my 
question. Suppose that you do love each other. What are 
you going to do about it?” 

“It is not what I am going to do about it, Mr. Watts. You 
don’t seem to understand. It is what we are going to do 
about it. Melodie and I can settle that for ourselves!” 

The old man stared at him cryptically. There was no key 
to interpret the meaning of his scrutiny. He was studying 
Charley intently. 

“Peter,” he said, at length, “I have made you angry, and 
maybe I have hurt you. But I haven’t been half as severe as 


284 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


I should be. You see what you want, and you hate everything 
that stands in your way. That is youth! Let it pass! After 
all, I have very little right in the matter. I am just an old 
man, who loves little Melodie very much. And love like this 
you are telling me about is so often heart-break. I don’t 
want her heart to be broken.” 

“I shan’t-” 

“Never mind! I understand. And now, my son, let me 
tell you about myself a very little. As I sat here listening 
to you, I was frankly amazed. This life you have lived, these 
dreams you have held to so steadfastly—they are a rebuke to 
me. I had my dreams once. They starved and died. I 
starved them myself. No one else can starve our dreams but 
ourselves. I did it; God help me, I did it. I gave up, for 
lack of faith and courage. You held on. That makes me 
want to love you, too, my boy. I want to help you. This 
idea that you have for a picture thrills my soul. I—I don’t 
want to seem to be mawkish, but I wonder if you can under¬ 
stand and forgive? I mean that as I heard you telling me 
how you loved Melodie, and how she would be the inspiration 
for your picture—well, there was a warmth here in my heart 
as if an old spark in the ashes had taken flame. I would like 
to help you!” 

“I knew you would!” 

“Not so fast! Not so fast, my young friend. There is 
much that stands in the way. You tell me how you surprised 
these people with your two drawings. That means nothing 
to me. It takes very little to surprise such people. I do not 
know if you have really fire, and if you haven’t, I can’t help 
you. But if you have-” 

The old man stood up, holding out his hand with the pipe 
clutched between his fingers, as if it were a smoking censer 
at an altar, and he were there to profess an oath. 

“If you have, then I am willing to give you the rest of my 
old years. I can teach you! All the dreams I slew shall 



A PRECIOUS FOOL 


285 


come to life again through you. You are like an instrument 
—if you have but fire, boy. I sound like a driveling old 
fool! God help us, I am! But I do know how to paint! I 
can teach you as the masters of old taught the young men 
with dreams! I see it very clearly, Peter. If you have only 
fire-■” 

His eyes were alight as he came nearer to Charley. 

“It must be so!” he muttered. “It all depends on that. If 
you have fire, little Melodie will love you, and you can paint. 
If you have not fire-” 

He sank wearily into his chair. 

“God help us all!” he gasped. 

In a few moments, Watts became intensely practical. 

“You must draw me a picture, here and now,” he decided. 
“You must show me, as you say you have showed those 
others, that you have fire!” 

“Let me draw—Melodie’s face,” proposed Charley at once. 

“No, young man! Not yet—perhaps not for years. Dream 
on, my red-haired friend, until every stroke you make is 
worthy of her! No—why not draw me a picture of—the 
brush man?” 

“Mr. Strieker?” 

“Why not?” 

Charley’s grin was almost discouraged. John Strieker! 
A very large father-in-law of a man, with a round, grizzly 
head, and drooping cheeks, mottled and splotched. A jest¬ 
ing paunch and a rapacious jowl. Mr. John Strieker, presi¬ 
dent of the Atlass Brush Company, ready to spring an 
original. 

“I can’t do that,” declared Charley. “I shall never draw 
another ugly picture as long as I live.” 

“And you can’t find anything beautiful in the brush man?” 

“Absurd!” 

“You have a great deal to learn, Peter,” old Watts said 




286 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


severely. “There is certainly something beautiful in that 
man—because there is something beautiful in everything. 
There is even a dream in his factory—for those of us who 
have eyes to see.” 

“A woman told me that once,” Charley exclaimed, remem¬ 
bering Constance. “But I cannot understand it—I cannot 
see it!” 

The old art dealer made a flourish of dismissal with his pipe. 

“Draw something in which you do see beauty,” he said. 

A happy inspiration came to Charley. He was forbidden 
to draw the face he loved best in the world; he would draw 
another face that he cherished very dearly. Over the paper 
he bent, his eyes warm with pleasant purpose. Rapidly he 
sketched a gentle countenance. It was not difficult to find, or 
to express, the beauty in those serene eyes; the ascetic contour 
of that lofty brow. In the few and limited lines of this hasty 
drawing, he found it somehow simple to infuse a part of a 
soul that he had known to be noble and beautiful. Inherent 
in it was something of the shy and shining glory of the 
spirit. 

All too quickly it was done, for he had loved each line he 
marked. 

“There is the picture of a friend I loved,” said Charley, as 
he passed the paper to Watts. 

The old man examined it with intense interest. He carried 
it nearer to the light, and bent down his face close to it. 

“Fire!” he muttered, as if he were afraid to trust his voice 
aloud. “Fire! Fire is here, Peter boy! There is something 
real in this. I know! I have eyes to see! Where is—how 
did you get it in here, Peter? This is splendid. Fire! You 
have it, Peter—I need no better proof than this simple thing, 
for it has a soul. Who was this man?” 

“I did not know his name,” replied Charley. “They called 
him a madman. I know only his initials. They were 
D. D. D.” 


A PRECIOUS FOOL 


287 


When Melodie opened the basement door with her key, and 
came into the old-fashioned basement room, she found only 
Charley. 

“Oh, Peter!” she cried, her eyes shining with surprise. 
“I thought you had to be somewhere else to-night. I’m so 
glad! You old fraud, you!” 

He came nearer to her, smiling. 

“Where’s Uncle Alex?” she demanded. 

“That is a mystery,” he told her, as he took her hands in 
his. “Melodie—your hands are cold, and it’s warm to-night! 
What makes your hands so cold, little Melodie?” 

She shivered laughingly. 

“It’s that darned old fountain on the stage,” she explained. 
“If they don’t heat that water, I’m going on a strike, I am. 
It’s hell to be a mermaid in cold water! You just try it and 
see, old trooper!” 

“Let me warm you,” he said softly, as he drew her to him 
closely, shutting her to him with arms tender and possessive. 
“Let me hold you close and keep you warm—always!” 

She smiled up at him contentedly. 

“I don’t mind . . . except for my hat! Let me take my 
hat off—it’s the only good one I’ve got!” 

“A hat on your hair is a sacrilege,” he said, as he released 
her. 

“Twenty dollars worth of sacrilege, Peter. There!” 

She touched her hair swiftly with those white, elfen fingers; 
then stood before him, smiling again. 

“What’s all the mystery about Uncle Alex?” she asked. 

He took her hands again and pressed them tightly between 
his own. The contact made him tremble; there was some¬ 
thing so immeasurably dear and desirable about her presence, 
her nearness, her eyes, her smile, the feel of her hands that 
for a moment he could not speak. 

“Peter! Why do you look at me like that?” she asked. 


288 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

“I want to warm you!” he said huskily. “I want to warm 
your soul with mine, Melodie. I-” 

Her eyes returned his ardent gaze clearly and frankly. 

“Yes, Peter.” 

“To-night—when we were together in the restaurant—I 
wanted to tell you, then, Melodie—but somehow, it seemed so 
unnecessary. I thought—we both understood. Now—I’m so 
afraid we didn’t. I’ve got to tell you. I want you, Melodie. 
I—I love you, dear. I want you to be mine—always!” 

Her lips were trembling; there were tears in her eyes. 
Suddenly she seemed to sway and fall against him, burying 
her head against his coat. 

“My little Melodie,” he murmured, kissing her hair. “My 
own, my beautiful one!” 

“Oh, Peter,” she sobbed. “I’m just a bucolic little fool! 
I know it! But I’m so happy, Peter. And I’m such a little 
nobody! I want you so much—forever and ever, Peter— 
just forever and ever and ever—and I just feel I’m such a 
little nobody, I’ll never be good enough for you. And I do 
love you, Peter—I smiled at you in the train first because I 
did. It’s just so beautiful-” 

He lifted her in his arms; so young, so slim and light and 
precious. Holding her there, he looked down upon her lovely 
face; the dreamy, womanly eyes, and the girlish lips to which 
the shy smile came back gently and with its own dear invi¬ 
tation. The smile filled him with a tender madness. He bent 
closer, bringing his lips nearer and nearer to her own, until 
their breathing mingled. The grip of his arms around her 
grew stronger. Soon their lips came together, while she was 
still smiling, so that he seemed to snare her smile and hold 
it prisoned in their kiss. 

The old clock on the shelf ticked sedately for full one 
hour, if not longer; reckoning with its moving hands seconds, 
minutes, hours. But to Melodie and Charley, seconds, 


A PRECIOUS FOOL 289 

minutes, hours no longer existed. They had abandoned them¬ 
selves to love, and while it lasts love is its own eternity. 

Still with their first kiss unbroken, he had carried her 
across the room to the old arm chair. Time fled from them, 
leaving them to the persistent delirium of that first embrace. 

When she drew back at last, it was because the tears had 
come again. 

“Do you love me, my beautiful Melodie?” he murmured. 

“I—I would die for you, Peter! I’d gladly die for you!” 

“Are you warm now?” 

“It’s always warm when I’m near you. Stay near me 
always, and I’ll never be cold again—not even in the water! 
The water is cold, Peter—you must stay near me!” 

“I’ll never leave you, my beautiful! I shall always be 
near to warm you! My Aphrodite! My dream girl come 
true!” 

“Say that again, Peter dear! It sounds so beautiful!” 

He would have said it again, undoubtedly, if there had not 
come an interruption. A sudden knocking sounded at the 
window; an impatient and inquiring tapping, quite per¬ 
emptory in attack. 

“What’s that?” gasped Melodie. 

“It’s your Uncle Alex! I’d forgotten—just a minute!” 

He hurried into the street, and Melodie, flushed and won¬ 
dering, tried to rearrange her wayward hair, while she lis¬ 
tened to voices outside the door. Charley came back smiling. 

“What is all this about, Peter!” she asked. 

He sat down beside her and drew her close again. 

“Uncle Alex loves you, Melodie. He didn’t believe me 
when I told him—about our love. He wanted to be sure you 
really did care. You do, don’t you Melodie? . . . Well, 
then! He agreed to go outside and give us a chance to come 
to a definite understanding. He’s been waiting out there for 
an hour and when he got too tired, he banged on the window!” 

And then he told her of the compact they had made to- 


290 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


gether, and how the old man hoped to make Charley a great 
artist, that he might paint a wonderful picture of Melodie. 

“Where is he now?” she asked softly. 

Charley didn’t know. The old man had departed on some 
mysterious errand. 

“And,” Charley concluded, “I don’t know how long he will 
be gone, but I want you to kiss me, my beautiful, until he 
comes back!” 

“Suppose he should decide not to come back, Peter?” 

“Then I want you to kiss me forever!” 

His arms filled with bundles, Uncle Alex finally returned. 
Without glancing at either Melodie or Charley he carried them 
silently into a room at the rear. At length he came in to 
them, and stood holding out his arms to Melodie. 

“Come here, little girl,” he said. 

She ran into his embrace, throwing her arms around his 
neck and crying like a little child. 

“There! Stop it, you!” said the old man. “It’s all right! 
I understand! You’re happy and he’s happy—and I want you 
both to understand that I’m happy too! Stop it, now, 
Melodie!” 

She was laughing, while she was crying, as she patted his 
withered cheeks. 

“What’s all the surprise?” she asked him. 

“You’ll see, soon enough. Just you sit there and let me 
attend to things!” 

And while they watched him he attended to things marvel¬ 
ously well. Over the center table he flung a white cloth, and 
on this he proceeded to set forth a feast. A cold bird, done 
to a turn by one of the best chefs in America, he explained; 
two baskets of fruits, tempting salads, cakes and ices. 

“And finally—this!” he proclaimed. 

The lamplight illuminated his face, as he held aloft a 
dark bottle, covered with cobweb. 


A PRECIOUS FOOL 


291 


“Port—rare and rich old port!” he crowed. “Blessed with 
the beeswing of fifty years! It will bring us all—heart’s 
ease.” 

It was a rare feast. To Charley it was a new and surpris¬ 
ing experience, incomparably satisfying. For the first time 
in his life he had found beautiful realities. Hitherto, every¬ 
thing that he had loved had existed only in his imagination. 
These joys were actual, tangible, real. He was finding pleas¬ 
ure in physical things. It had begun with his first kiss, 
pressed on Melodie’s lips. She was the one piece of clay 
in the world worthy of his dreams. All that she touched, 
she blessed for him and made beautiful to his senses. Until 
he had kissed her, nothing physical had been holy to him. 
Her lips were holy. They were as precious as the finest and 
most ethereal of his fancies. This bread that she broke for 
him was holy. Spirit was in her lips and in this food. 

“Look!” cried Melodie. “Let’s make a wish!” 

She had found the wishing bone. Charley took one end 
and she the other, and together they pulled it asunder. The 
larger half was left in Charley’s fingers. 

“Your wish will come true, Peter dear!” she reminded him 
happily. “Tell me what it was?” 

“I wished that your wish would come true, my beautiful,” 
he replied. “And what was your wish?” 

“That you’d never get tired of bucolic little me,” she 
whispered. 

“I was wishing you’d both be happy forever,” remarked 
Uncle Alex, helping himself to a wing of the chicken. “Now, 
it’s about time we talked common sense. We’ve got to begin 
right at the beginning. Charley says he is willing to do 
anything to learn how to paint. Now if any man can teach 
him what he ought to know, it’s your Uncle Alex. But the 
young man has got to live while he learns—most young men 
do. So what are we going to do about it? Well, this is what 
I propose. I’ve been keeping this little shop here for a long 


292 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


time . . . Why shouldn’t I take Peter on as a clerk? Neither 
one of us will have too much to do—but I’m well able to 
afford it, understand—and when we’re not busy, I can be 
teaching him what he wants to learn. He can live right here 
—and I’ll pay him enough to let him take you to the movies 
once in a while, Melodie. How’s that sound?” 

“Now, Mr. Watts-” began Charley, in protest. 

“Don’t you Mr. Watts me,” cried Uncle Alex. “That is 
the thing to do. In three or four years, I’ll make a genius 
out of you, young man, if genius you be. And you’ll always 
be near to Melodie, if you do as I suggest.” 

Melodie seized the old man’s hand gratefully. 

“Please do what he says, Peter, dear,” she pleaded. “It 
would make me very happy. Uncle Alex is always right 
about everything, and I’ll never be cold again—with you so 
near me.” 

After that, there was no more argument. When Charley 
finally said good night to Melodie, he returned to his room 
in Pomander Walk for the last time. 

Henceforth, he was to live in the little wooden house, just 
forty-five seconds from Broadway. 

What was the secret of her? Why did he love her, so 
utterly and so supremely? Was it her smile, her glance, her 
gentle artlessness? He asked himself the question as he 
tossed on his bed that night. And then he despised himself 
for asking it. Why analyze, or seek to isolate his pulsing 
joyousness? What did it matter? He loved her! He loved 
her, loved her, loved her! She was his dream girl come true. 
That was enough. 

That night he dreamed of Clara. He thought he saw her, 
washing the front steps, and saying to herself that life was 
like this, day in and day out. He woke up, shuddering. For 
the time of his dream, he had believed himself back in that 
dreary house, again her husband. Poor Clara. He lay awake 


A PRECIOUS FOOL 


293 


and wondered. Had she ever had a dream? Would it ever 
come true? There was a tenderness in his musings of her; 
he would like her to be happy, too. 

One great truth came to him before he slept again. All 
his life, he had been remote from the world around him. He 
could not approach it, nor had it cared to reach out vain 
hands to him. Melodie bridged the gulf. She was part of 
earth and part of dreams, and through their love all things 
were possible. 


CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE 


I AM THAT I AM 

There was no matinee that next afternoon. In the morning 
Charley had left Pomander Walk, to make his home in a 
small room upstairs in the little wooden house. Melodie and 
he went for a walk after lunch; up Riverside Drive until they 
came to a huge gray bowlder, rising sheerly from the park. 
Upon its rocky eminence, they reached a final understanding 
of their hearts. 

Laughing like children, they clambered to the sharp peak 
of the bowlder, only to grow silent as they looked down the 
long wet vista of the Hudson, moving under a veil of white 
mist. Here he told her. Clasping tight her hand, as they 
sat together, he related the simple history of himself. 

“And now I have found you and I want you,” he mur¬ 
mured, when all of it was told. “I want you all for myself 
—forever.” 

She returned his gaze with sober eyes. 

“I do love you, Peter,” she said slowly. “And you mustn’t 
misunderstand me. While you talked, I tried to understand 
you. I couldn’t—with my head. I don’t know enough to. 
But I felt it all—here, in my heart. I’m such a nobody, I’m so 
afraid you’ll get tired. If that time ever comes-” 

“Melodie!” 

“If it ever does, Peter, remember a wedding ring wouldn’t 
matter to me. I would take it off my finger and wear it on 
a ribbon around my neck, for a remembrance. A ceremony 
wouldn’t mean anything then. Only you would matter— 
nothing else. But I’ll do whatever you want me to do, Peter!” 

294 


I AM THAT I AM 295 

“Couldn’t you come away with me a little while, my beau¬ 
tiful? Couldn’t we have—our honeymoon?” 

She closed her eyes and sighed. 

“That would be heaven, Peter.” 

Then she opened her eyes widely, shaking his arms and 
laughing in excitement. 

“The show closes next week,” she exclaimed. “We can 
go on our honeymoon then!” 

On a remote promontory of the Long Island shore there 
was an estate, owned by one of the customers of Uncle Alex; 
a patron who was also a friend. A little house had been 
built, close to the shore, which the owner lent his friends on 
their fishing excursions. 

To this remote shore, and to this little house, came Charley 
and Melodie, to spend their week together. 

A magistrate had pronounced the foolish words over them; 
words which neither of them heard, for their hearts were too 
full for listening to his mumblings. Afterward, they rode 
across the island in a noisy train, and from the station they 
were driven to the estate in a hired Ford. But the rest of the 
way, down the steep hillsides to the sea, they hurried, hand 
in hand, alone. 

They found their little house, and exclaimed over its cozy 
comfort, and all the evidences of loving thought which Uncle 
Alex had left there. He had stored its cupboards with food, 
and its fireplace with logs. All was clean and bright with 
welcome. 

Then, still hand in hand, they left the house and sought 
the open beach. A fresh wind was blowing; the breakers 
rode in to the great rocks, green and white and boisterously 
friendly. In their nostrils was the salt tang of the ocean; the 
spin-drift wet their faces. Through the orange haze of the 
retreating sunset sped the sea-gulls, black as silhouettes, utter- 


296 BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

ing harsh sounds as they wheeled and hung with fluttering 
wings. 

The majesty of this desolate display stilled their spirits 
into reverence. For the first time, Charley stood upon the 
shore and beheld the ocean. How he had cursed the little 
hay at home, rimmed with its jealous shores! How he had 
yearned for the ocean, high, boundless, heaving! Melodie 
clung to him, like a frightened child. 

“Are you cold, little Melodie?” he murmured, stroking her 
hair. 

“Not cold, Peter dear. Maybe I’m frightened!” 

“There is nothing for you to be afraid of, darling!” 

“The water! It seems to rush at us so, Peter! It is so big 
and so—so cold, Peter. Keep me close to you, dear—close 
and warm.” 

He clasped her to him passionately. How dear she was! 
How tender, fragile, precious! The orange warmth of the 
sun was on her face and hair as he kissed her. 

He gathered a heap of dry driftwood, and awkwardly 
coaxed it into a blaze. As a yellow fire leaped upward, 
crackling gayly, the lavender twilight stole in over them, 
drenching the sky with dusk. Their voices sank to whispers, 
and after a while they spoke no more, as she nestled close to 
him. They listened to the crashing hiss of the waves, like 
the surf-beat of heart-break on the lonely sands. 

She was trembling. 

“I’m tired, Peter dear,” she murmured. 

“Shall we go in, little Melodie?” 

“Let me rest my head against your shoulder and close my 
eyes—and dream!” 

In a little while she was asleep. Very close to him he 
held her, kissing her hands, her hair, her cheeks, so gently 
that she did not waken. The twilight darkened and it was 
soon night; the tumbling roar of the waters grew louder, 



“There is your autograph, God,” he muttered. “I Am That I Am 
scrawled in stars.” 






I AM THAT I AM 297 

somehow ominous and threatening. Through the sky came 
trooping the ancient march of stars. 

It was growing colder. 

A hush was on his soul; the hush of fear in a moment of 
great happiness. A man with his woman, facing the dark 
sea. Something beautiful and terrible wailed in his soul and 
cried. He gazed up toward the sky, and to his lips unbidden 
came a prayer. 

“There is your autograph, God,” he muttered. “There you 
have written your signature in the silver script of worlds 
without number. I Am That I Am scrawled in stars. I, too, 
am that I am, oh, Brother God! Let me come close to her 
and warm her—always!” 

He had spoken the words aloud. Melodie stirred and 
opened her eyes. 

“I am cold, Peter dear,” she murmured. “Take me into 
our little house. And kiss me, Peter—this is our wedding 
night!” 


CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR 


years! years! years! 


Thus life began all over again for Charley Turner. 

It was a different life from anything he had ever con¬ 
jectured; a life of dreams emerging into realities. 

First there was his work in the shop, helping Uncle Alex. 
This was full of interesting experiences and contact with de¬ 
lightful characters. Modest and retiring though the shop 
appeared, it received illustrious visitors. Old Alexander 
Watts was known among collectors as a man with eyes in 
his head, who occasionally had a good picture to sell. It 
seemed, too, these collectors prized his friendship quite as 
much as his artistic judgment. 

One of these visitors was a blonde Frenchman whose name 
was Dessier. Uncle Alex told Charley he was a most dis¬ 
tinguished man, whose face was watched intently when he 
attended an exhibit in Paris. Dessier spoke but indifferent 
English; thus he and Charley talked but little, but there w T ere 
long, chattering conversations between the Frenchman and the 
art dealer. 

Toward his young assistant, the attitude of Uncle Alex was 
that of a guardian of a coming king. He taught Charley to 
paint, exactly as if he expected of him all that Charley’s 
dreams had promised. These lessons began immediately 
after the return of Charley and Melodie from their hallowed 
week by the sea. Melodie had soon signed another contract, 
and was busy with rehearsals in an elaborate musical show. 

298 


YEARS! YEARS! YEARS! 


299 


Practically all the day Uncle Alex and Charley were alone 
in the house, and the lessons were interrupted only when 
customers interfered. 

In matters of art Uncle Alex was a free-thinker. He be¬ 
lieved in the widest latitude; in letting a pupil grope through 
various forms until he found the most appropriate medium 
and method. They had long experiments and demonstrations, 
and there were days when only the most genuine faith could 
beat back discouragement. As the months hurried on, these 
days were less frequent; long intervals separated them; faith 
was being justified by the evidence of works. 

Charley was at heart a Venetian; a color worshiper, and 
it was along this bright path Uncle Alex finally decided to 
guide him. With great gusto, the old man talked, days with¬ 
out end, of the glories of the method of Bellini. 

“Such brilliancy! Such freedom!” he would exclaim, as he 
carefully expounded the underpainting in dead color, over 
which were to be superimposed the bright, transparent glazes. 
“Ah, Peter! You shall make pictures, burning with the rich¬ 
ness of life. Nothing shall bind you, my boy. You shall 
make your own technique, because you shall be a master!” 

Yet Uncle Alex was unsparing in his criticism. In Charley 
he detected a tendency to bold and vigorous outline; a swift 
contempt for detail. This he knew to be quite as much a 
virtue as a vice, but he would not permit his pupil to slight 
the knowledge of how to paint accurately, in spite of this 
tendency. 

Often they talked of the great conception; the proud picture 
that was some day to be painted; the Madonna Melodie. 

“It will be years, Peter,” Uncle Alex would say, with a 
determined shake of his head. “Years! Years! Years!” 

“Do you like this bucolic existence with a little nobody 
like me?” Melodie asked him one day. 

“It is not bucolic,” he reprimanded her, pinching her chin. 


300 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


“You don’t know what the word means. You heard some one 
say it, and you like to use it. This is a lotus life, Melodie!” 

She smiled at him, as he always loved to have her smile, 
especially when she did not understand him. 

It was a lotus life. His dreams were coming true. After 
two years under the tutelage of Uncle Alex he know he was 
to be an artist. Power armed his wrist and warmed his 
fingers. He, himself, had changed, even as had his life. His 
face was calmer, his eyes graver and more kind. In his 
manner there was less jerky nervousness and impatience; 
more restraint, more of humanity. 

The secret of it all was that he and Melodie were happy. 
Of that he was certain. In her he found every thirst slaked 
and every hunger satisfied. Once he said to Uncle Alex: 

“She is unceasingly feminine, Uncle Alex. She cannot say 
or do a thing in discord. It’s all natural and womanly. She 
has a hundred moods, a thousand glances, and every one is 
purely feminine.” 

As Charley began to he a more competent artist he took 
to decorating the walls of their sleeping room. It was a 
quaint old room, walled with white plaster. 

“Let’s make this our own Sistine Chapel,” he proposed one 
day. “I’ll paint all the pictures for you, my beautiful. What 
would you like?” 

“What you would like, Peter dear?” 

He found a curious joy in painting on those old walls. 
Sometimes he closed his eyes and tried to imagine he was 
Raphael, or Michael Angelo, on a scaffolding in Rome. From 
his palette, many of his old dreams came trooping out upon 
the plaster. Above the bed-post he put a burnoosed brigand, 
astride a galloping black stallion, racing across a desert of 
sanded gold. He painted a motley circle, squatting around 
an Algerian marabout, performing mystic feats in the scarlet 
market place of the Moulay Idriss. In a panel near the 


YEARS! YEARS! YEARS! 301 

bureau he painted a pair of serious little angels, playing 
upon a psaltery. 

Melodie loved these pictures. With her elfin fingers she 
rumpled his hair and told him he was too wonderful to be 
true. She was thinner than she had been; of late she had 
been complaining of feeling languid and tired. 

It was the next day that Helen Saylor came into the shop. 
With her was the young poet to whom Charley had been 
introduced in the dining room of the Onandaga. It hap¬ 
pened that Uncle Alex was downtown; Charley and Melodie 
were in the shop together when Helen and her poet arrived. 

The recognition was mutual and instantaneous. For all his 
poise, Charley felt somewhat flustered. Helen reddened, and 
although her greeting was casual enough, she, too, was em¬ 
barrassed. They were there to look at a picture done by one 
of her friends in the village, but her examination of it was 
altogether perfunctory. 

“You—are working here?” she asked, when Charley had 
put the picture back in its place. 

“Yes,” he said. 

“You know—Peter—Gensler still remembers your work?” 

He nodded briefly, without answering. From the shadows 
in the back of the room, Melodie was watching. Helen bit 
her lip; she could not resist turning to glance at the girl at 
the other side of the room. 

She turned and smiled at Charley ingratiatingly. 

“Keep on remembering that, Peter,” she said dulcetly. 
“Pm so glad I saw you again.” 

When she was gone Melodie approached him with alert, 
clairvoyant eyes. 

“Who was she, Peter?” she asked. 

He told her, and for a while afterward Melodie was silent. 
When she did speak there was a catch in her voice. 

“She loves you, Peter. I saw it. A woman always knows 
such things. She does love you, Peter!” 


302 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


“Nonsense, my beautiful!” 

“Peter, she does! Have you ever cared for her—even a 
little bit?” 

“Not even a little bit!” 

“But suppose—suppose something should happen to me, 
sometime—now stop, dear—anything might happen, you 
know, a taxi, or-” 

“My darling!” 

“It’s only supposing, Peter. Do you think you could ever 
—later-” 

“Foolish and jealous little beautiful!” 

“Kiss me, Peter dear. And warm me. I’m cold!” 

He loved her madly! Art and woman; he had found them 
together. This was the reward of once having rejected a 
sordid compromise. As he would think upon these wonders 
a bright gleam would shine in his eyes. For the preservation 
of these dreams come true, he would have endured with a 
laugh the agony of Stephen stoned, of the Bab with the 
burning candles stuck in holes cut in his breasts. 

Melodie, too, was growing; unfolding toward the beauty 
he showed her like the late blossoming of a rose. Together 
they went on long walks in the country, through patches of 
woods where the brown box-elders, the maples stripped of 
their ashen leaves, the smooth gray bark of the beeches and 
the sturdy live oaks waited patiently for the spring. In an 
unhappy little opera called “Lodoletta” they heard Caruso 
sing; once they attended an afternoon of chamber music by 
the Zoellners playing in Aeolian Hall, where Melodie liked 
especially well a jocund Haydn quartet. 

It was curious that in all the hard and earnest effort of 
these learning years he was never really discouraged, though 
progress was often dishearteningly slow. Uncle Alex and 
Melodie believed in him, triumphing with him before accom¬ 
plishment, which is great faith. 

It was now almost four years since he had come to live in 


YEARS! YEARS! YEARS! 303 

the little wooden house, and at last Uncle Alex said to 
him: 

“Peter, my son, give me your hand. Your novitiate is at 
an end. To-day you may begin to paint your Madonna 
Melodie.” 

His conception of womanhood as Venus and Madonna was 
a revolutionary idea. Charley intended its expression to be 
more daring still. Through the long years of apprentice¬ 
ship the design for the painting had burned itself deeper 
into his soul, so that now, when he was ready to undertake it, 
the scheme was fixed and clear. 

He would paint a nude Madonna. 

Hitherto artists had wrapped her holy form in purple 
swathings, velvet robes laced with gold, veils and wimples 
and blasphemous skirts. This heresy he would end; her ex¬ 
quisite body was to be a true image of the divine. 

Clasped in her arms, a veil around its form, would nestle 
the child of love. This mothering embrace would be por¬ 
trayed after the remembrance of a long ago vespers in the 
ward of the hospital for crippled children. Yet the pose of 
the body, graceful, rising and trembling in a still dance of 
love, would be taken from the recollection of the night he 
had beheld her, lifted in the fountain. 

He intended that all his sense of beauty and of reverence 
for woman should be conveyed in this painting. The figure 
of the woman would stand forth eloquently against a back¬ 
ground of deep and languorous tones. The red hair would 
fall over her white shoulders and arms that held the infant 
in a halo of living fire. Her violet eyes would gaze down 
adoringly, and all the meaning and all the mystery of the 
picture would be completed in the smile of her parted lips. 

Before them waited months of patient toil; of unceasing 
inspiration. As he thought of those waiting months, Charley 
was filled with dread. Melodie was ill. For her sake, he 


304 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


would willingly have abandoned the picture. She was dearer 
to him than anything else in the world. A blight had seemed 
to overtake her; when, on that first day, she posed before him 
in their attic studio, it seemed to him as if there was some¬ 
thing ethereal and unearthly upon her beautiful body; an 
impalpable loveliness. 

“You are not strong enough,” he said. “I cannot let you 
tire yourself, my beautiful. We must wait.” 

To his astonishment, she broke into a torrent of weeping. 
She was strong enough! She would let him know when she 
was tired. 

He gave in to her, as he always did, but not until she agreed 
to see a physician. That very night Charley brought a doctor 
to the house. He asked odd questions, made mysterious 
probings and computations. Later, outside the basement 
door, he told Charley his diagnosis. 

“Pernicious anasmia. Hard to combat. Rest and good 
food. But we may pull her through. I think it would be 
better to let her have her way about the posing. Happiness 
is a great medicine, no matter what the pathology.” 

From that moment onward, Charley Turner lived and loved 
and worked always in fear. He tried not to allow Melodie to 
know this, but often she asked him why he was so quiet; why 
there was a shadow in his eyes. At such times he would 
fold her to him, straining her dear body against his own, and 
her elfin fingers would rumple his hair, as she would whisper: 

“What’s the matter, Peter dear? Don’t you love me any 
more?” 

The picture grew beneath his eager hands; the progress 
was steady; as the weeks passed into months it seemed to be 
coming alive. Both Melodie and Uncle Alex were enthusi¬ 
astic. The old man watched it, practically every spare 
moment that he had. He refused to permit Charley to work 
in the shop, insisting that he must concentrate now upon his 
great dream. 


YEARS! YEARS! YEARS! 


305 


Once he brought Dessier up the little, winding stairs and 
the two of them exclaimed together in French, and chat¬ 
tered volubly. When Dessier left, Uncle Alex lit his pipe 
and smoked valorously, as if he had cause for immense and 
secret pleasure. 

Then came a most unexpected discouragement. 

Charley found it impossible to paint Melodie’s smile. 
Almost until the last he had waited, because he felt that 
bound up in her swift, elusive smile was all the symbolism 
of the picture. Now he found that the smile constantly 
evaded him. It seemed too swift for capture. When he 
attempted to fix it on the canvas, the result was inevitably a 
despoliation of it all—a wooden smile, altogether unworthy. 

After many failures, he was ready to despair. 

“I know why it is,” said Melodie soothingly. “It’s all my 
fault, Peter. I’ve got to learn how to hold the smile long 
enough for you to catch it!” 

“I am afraid you can’t, my beautiful,” he replied. “Your 
smile is like a butterfly, hovering over your flower-like lips. 
Who can hold a butterfly?” 

She was lying on the bed, very tired. The figure-posing 
was long since ended, and now she was lying down almost 
constantly. Her paling cheeks and weary eyes filled Charley 
with terror. 

“Peter dear,” she said, “I’m a different girl now from the 
tough little kid you met on the train, am I not? I’ve changed 
a lot. I’m a better girl in a great many ways—but I’m sick, 
and that’s hell, Peter. I feel so ashamed when I look at your 
picture. Just since you started to paint I’ve got so thin. My 
legs are a sight—my body’s all wasted away. It isn’t like 
what it was when you saw me coming up in the water, is it, 
Peter? Oh, Peter dear, do you love me as much now as you 
did then?” 

He clasped her to him crushingly. 

“You’ll be more beautiful than ever before, my own beau- 


306 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


tiful one,” he murmured brokenly. “Strength and health will 
come back to you, and all your rosy loveliness. But I love 
you as you are—more and more with each breath I draw, my 
own, my beautiful one.” 

She laughed lightly. 

“Now I can smile again,” she said. “Get your brush and 
try to catch the butterfly!” 

He tried, but, as always, in vain. Day followed day, and 
week followed week, and the picture remained unfinished. 
Uncle Alex sought vainly to advise him. They had reached 
an extraordinary impasse . 


CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE 


cold! 

One day Uncle Alex spoke to Charley seriously. 

“I have been talking to Dessier,” the old man said. “He 
has seen your picture. I cannot begin to convey to you the 
man’s enthusiasm. He understands your difficulty, and he 
said to me frankly that he believed that was the one obstacle 
in the path of a world masterpiece.” 

Charley nodded apathetically. He was thinking of Melodie. 

“Now,” continued Uncle Alex, “Dessier’s word on a matter 
of that kind, Peter, is of immense importance. Did you 
know that Dessier is one of the judges in the new French 
cathedral competition? Surely I told you that? They are 
holding a world-wide competition for a picture to go in a 
panel of a restored French cathedral that was nearly blown 
to ruins in the war. Do you know what Dessier said to me? 
He said your picture might win that prize!” 

“No church would ever accept such a picture,” said 
Charley. 

“In France? Certainly!” declared Uncle Alex. “There 
are people in France with eyes, my son.” 

“Even so, I cannot finish the picture. My heart is break¬ 
ing slowly into little pieces. I cannot paint her smile.” 

“I was leading up to that,” resumed Uncle Alex. “I am 
inclined to think, Peter, that it is because your heart is break¬ 
ing that you have done so astoundingly well so far. I know 
you are worried about Melodie. Do you think I am not wor- 

307 


308 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


ried, too? But I have not lost hope—not for her health, and 
not for your picture!” 

“What do you mean, Uncle Alex?” 

“The doctor told me something the other day which set me 
thinking. He said a long voyage at sea would probably make 
her well, when everything else had failed. Peter, I am afraid 
we have no time for delay. You must not mind the actions 
of an impetuous old man—but I have taken the trouble to 
arrange a long sea voyage for the two of you—and you sail 
this week.” 

“Uncle Alex! How-” 

“Never mind. There is a slow boat, which does not reach 
France until the end of a three weeks’ voyage. Just the thing 
for you both. It is not a passenger ship, but the captain 
sometimes takes a few. You will be the only passengers on 
board. I have hired a cabin for you and Melodie; a room 
with a north light, my boy, and I am sure that you will have 
finished the picture with the smile you want, long before you 
reach the other side.” 

“Uncle Alex-” 

“A word more. Dessier has returned to Paris. Promise 
me, Peter, that when you reach there you will find him and 
turn over your picture to the competition. And think, Peter! 
You will show Melodie Paris!” 

Charley caught the old man’s hand in a close grip. He 
could not speak, but both of them understood. 

Uncle Alex stood on the dock, waving to them pathetically 
with his handkerchief, as the ship slipped out into the river 
and put to sea. 

Melodie cried, as she waved back to him. She tried to be 
bright; tried to share in the excitement which Charley sought 
to evoke in her. Her pretense was brave, but he saw 
through it. 

“You must rest, now, my beautiful,” he said, as they stood 


COLD! 


309 


together, with the sunset behind them and the deepening 
purple of the ocean night beyond. “To-morrow, and all the 
days after, you shall sit in a deck-chair, covered with warm 
blankets and-” 

“You’ll talk to me, Peter?” 

“I’ll tell you of beautiful things, little Melodie.” 

Uncle Alex had personally supervised the packing of the 
picture, and its subsequent uncrating. Thus Charley found 
it set up carefully, and near it all that he would need to 
finish it, if he could. 

In the days that followed Charley and Melodie spent their 
very happiest hours. Their communion was perfect. Long 
hours of silence, broken only by the pressure of hands, and 
the meeting of loving eyes. Sweet confidences and the shar¬ 
ing of a rich understanding. His arm was her pillow at 
night, and the wash of the waters their lullaby. 

The rough sailors delighted to talk with her, and the cap¬ 
tain worshiped her. One morning he came into their cabin, 
where Charley was again struggling to capture her smile. 
The seaman, rough and untutored man that he was, bowed 
his head before the picture. 

But the smile was quite as elusive on sea as on shore. A 
week after they were out Charley spent one entire afternoon, 
while Melodie lay on the bed, coaxing the smile back to her 
mouth again and again, with a mad and desperate jesting. 

At length he put down his brush with a groan. 

“I am a brute,” he cried. “Here I’ve been making you 
work all afternoon. It has-” 

“I don’t mind, Peter,” she said. “It’s cold outside—the 
wind is blowing this afternoon. I think a storm is coming. 
Wouldn’t it be just terrible if we got sea-sick? It’s warm in 
here.” 

“Just the same, there will be no more work for twenty-four 
hours, my darling. You’ve gone on a strike, that’s all. For 
the next twenty-four hours you are to smile just for me, and 


310 BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 

not for my picture. And now, do you know what I am going 
to do?” 

“What, Peter dear?” 

“I am going down to see the cook. I’m going to give the 
cook orders. And when I come upstairs, I’m going to have 
a feast on a tray that will make you well and strong again, 
just to look at it.” 

“Dear Peter,” she murmured. “I’m tired now. I think I’ll 
take a nap—if you promise to wake me up when you come 
back.” 

He stood smiling in the doorway. 

“By-by!” he called. 

“Au revoir , old trooper!” she murmured drowsily. 

He had a long and confidential talk with the cook, a big 
man who had a daughter at home who wasn’t strong either. 
Indeed, and he would be glad to make something special for 
the little lady. Charley sat in the warm galley and chatted 
with the man, until more than an hour passed, and the tray, 
dainty with silver and napery, was ready. 

The ship was rolling as he ascended the companion-way. 
Melodie’s storm was truly on the way. He balanced himself 
against the wall, as he held the tray tightly with one hand, 
and opened their cabin door with the other. 

Inside it was dark. Dusk, intensified by storm clouds, 
filled the little room with shadows. Very carefully, he set 
down the tray, and then stepped softly to the bed. She was 
lying very still, her hands clasped over her heart, her face 
turned toward the canvas in its frame. 

He bent down and kissed her. 

“Wake up, my beautiful!” he called. “Wake up!” 

Her lips were cold. He touched her hands. They, too, 
were cold. Limp and cold. 

A horrible fear paralyzed him. 

“Melodie!” he cried gaspingly. “Wake up, Melodie!” 

She did not stir. His face twisted with agony, he knelt 


COLD! 311 

down and put his ear against her heart. Cold—silent and 
cold. 

“Melodie!” he screamed. “Oh, my lost one, my beautiful! 
My beautiful!” 

From the bow to the stern of the rolling ship they heard 
the echo of his wailing voice. Shriller than the winds it 
cried. The captain came, and presently the ship’s doctor. 
He made a futile gesture with his hairy hands. 

Mercifully they left him alone with her. Alone, as the 
blackness of night and storm filled the cabin and blotted out 
everything. 

Dear white, cold hands! Dear violet eyes that see no more! 
Venus is dead! 

“Where are you now?” his spirit was crying. “Where are 
you now, my lost, my beautiful one?” 

Uncounted and unnumbered, the hours passed. Kissing 
the white cold hands, kissing each slim and elfin finger that 
so often had rumpled his hair, whispering all his heart-break 
as he kissed her cold cheeks, he did not know how long the 
hours were. 

Heart-break! Heart-break! Words like the surf-beat on a 
desolate shore. Cold! Cold! Cold! He had promised to 
be near her always, to warm her always. 

“Never leave me, Peter. It’s always warm when you are 
near me.” 

Oh, God! 

“Au revoir, old trooper!” 

Oh, God! 

The storm was passing. The roll of the ship lessened, as 
through the wrack of angry cloud the moonlight came and 
bided with him. Its silver messenger came through the partly 
opened window; it crept across the floor and climbed up the 
side of the bed, until at last it lay as a dream-light on her 
face. 


312 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


Melodie had died with a smile! 

There it was, the fugitive and elusive smile, fixed in death 
upon her parted lips. For the broken-hearted dreamer she 
was smiling now; the butterfly was snared, and still and 
beautiful. 

A gasp of agony came from his throat. Sobbing, he 
stumbled to his feet. Down his cheeks were coursing tears. 
They wet his brush, as with a few, swift darting strokes across 
the painted lips upon the canvas, he gave them their smile 
and made the figure a living reality. 

The fugitive mystery was fixed and sealed upon her lips. 
As the artist fell forward beside the still form of his vanished 
dream girl, the Madonna Melodie was smiling at last. 

The ship was two weeks from land. 

He must understand that. The captain reminded him of 
the fact, with kindly and apologetic gestures. The others 
shook their heads in solemn confirmation. 

The ship was two weeks from land. 

He must understand that. There was no other way. It was 
the law of the sea. 

They led him off for a while, that he might not see what 
they were about. After a while, they brought him to the deck. 
All the crew was assembled there, with bared heads, and some 
of the men were weeping. Something was lying upon an 
improvised bier—a gray and wretched object, wrapped in 
canvas, tied up and corded and bandaged, and weighted with 
iron weights so that it would sink when lowered into the sea. 

The captain had a book. It w T as a black book, of pebbled 
leather, with thin leaves trimmed in gilt. The captain was 
reading out of the book, but Charley heard the words as 
whispers; his heart was throbbing out its own bleak ritual. 

“—that is bom of woman is of a few days and full of 
trouble ” read the captain sonorously. 

But Charley’s heart was throbbing: 


COLD! 


313 


“My beautiful! My lost one!” 

“—cometh forth like a flower and is cut down; fleeth 
also as a shadow and continueth not." 

Where are you now, my beautiful, my lost one? 

“Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God, in His wise 
providence, to take out of the world the soul of His deceased 
servant, we, therefore, commit her body to the deep -” 

The water is so cold, my beautiful, my lost one! 

“—looking for the general resurrection, when the earth 
and the sea shall give up their dead." 

Au revoir, my beautiful, my lost one! 

“Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, who in Thy perfect 
wisdom and mercy hast ended for Thy servant departed, the 
voyage of her troublous life, grant we beseech Thee, who are 
still to continue our course -” 

Down! Down! Down! 

Cold waves! Cold waves! Cold waves! 

Ah, little Melodie, who shall warm you now? 

Aphrodite is at the bottom of the sea! 




CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX 


MR. STRICKER’S BEST ORIGINAL 

“I want to see Mr. Peter Gaunt—personally.” 

The person who wished to see Mr. Peter Gaunt personally 
was a portly, gray-haired man of manifest importance, who 
stood in the little office outside the studio, hat in hand, rising 
and falling elegantly on his toes. 

The young woman at the desk nodded pleasantly. 

“Mr. Gaunt is engaged at the moment. Did you have an 
appointment?” 

The visitor shook his head. 

“When I want to see a big man, I never make an appoint¬ 
ment,” he explained. “I just walk right in. In my career in 
business, I’ve always found that was the way to do it, if you 
really wanted to see your man.” 

“Well, then, would you mind waiting? I don’t suppose I 
could help you.” 

The portly, gray-haired man laughed bushily, and tugged 
at his walrus mustaches. 

“No, miss,” he said, almost overcome with mirth. “No, 
I’m afraid you can’t help me. I deal with principals. Only 
with principals. I have never dealt with any one in my busi¬ 
ness career except principals—do that and life will always 
yield you ten per cent interest.” 

The girl laughed. 

“That’s a new one,” she flattered. 

“An original,” conceded the visitor, blandly. “How long 
have you been working for Mr. Gaunt?” 

314 


MR. STRICKER’S BEST ORIGINAL 315 

“About two years—ever since he returned from Europe.” 

“Well. I guess he finds you a great help. I admire that, 
young lady. Stick to one job, and one job will stick to you. 
It must be wonderful to work for a great man like Mr. Peter 
Gaunt.” 

“Mr. Gaunt is wonderful to every one!” 

“I saw the picture that made him famous three years ago— 
hanging in a cathedral on the other side. I took my wife and 
my boy Henry on a tour over there. Great place, Europe. 
Great place. But the good old U. S. A. for me every time. 
Yes, sir! I don’t know anything better to make a man a hun¬ 
dred per cent American than a tour to Europe. But I’ll never 
forget Mr. Gaunt’s picture. I had heard so much about it; 
the whole country was talking, you remember. It was pretty, 
all right—but—you know ” 

“Were you shocked at the idea of a nude Madonna?” 

“Well, I don’t know. There wasn’t anything shocking in 
the picture—even my boy Henry said that. He teaches a class 
in Sunday school. It’s high art, I guess. Down where I come 
from there ain’t much high art. What sort of looking man is 
Mr. Gaunt—they say he won’t have his picture printed?” 

“He’s a nice looking man.” 

“Does he always paint these-” 

“Nudes? No, sir. The Madonna Melodie is the only nude 
he ever painted. Artists are strange, you know.” 

“Is he—temperamental ? ” 

“Not at all. He is the most gentle and considerate man I 
ever knew. He says very little to any one, but his eyes are 
so kind. Mr. Gaunt is just wonderful. And he paints won¬ 
derful things now—beautiful murals for public buildings.” 

“That’s why I am here,” confided the visitor. “I am a 
committee of one, empowered to act!” 

“Really!” 

“Yes, sir. Down where I come from, we’re putting up a 
new Civic Improvement Building. There will be nothing like 


316 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


it on the Atlantic Seaboard. The city voted on a loan to 
build it and the loan passed with a big majority. Oh, we’re 
wide awake down there. Yes, sir. I was put on the com¬ 
mittee, and I suggested that the mural decorations in the lobby 
of our new Civic Improvement Building ought to be done by 
the biggest man in the business. Everybody knows who that 
is, I said—Peter Gaunt. Now I am known down home as the 
original Peter Gaunt man. So here I am. I want Mr. Gaunt 
to do those mural decorations—I want his name on the dotted 
line. Money is no object with me; the city treasury is going 
to foot this bill.” 

“If you will give me your name, I will ask Mr. Gaunt to see 
you now.” 

The portly man gave her a card, engraved in red lettering: 
“John Strieker, Esquire; president Atlass Brush Co., Strickly 
Strieker Brushes.” 

With the card in her hand, the girl passed into the studio, 
but before the door closed behind her, John Strieker’s foot 
had intercepted, and he walked in. 

“Excuse me, Mr. Gaunt,” he boomed, “if I walk right in 
here like this, I’m a man of-” 

He stopped and stared. His jaw dropped and his eyes 
widened in stupefied astonishment. He groaned throatily, 
bushily, and crushed his hat between his hands. 

“You—you—” he gasped. “You-” 

The artist, who had been standing by the easel, turned and 
looked him frankly in the eyes. He was red-haired, but with 
gray tufts among his wild locks; his blue eyes were filled 
with a settled resignation. The boyish cast of his face seemed 
at variance with the deep lines there. A flicker of surprise 
glowed in his blue eyes. 

“Good afternoon, Mr.-” 

He paused, his inflection inquiring, as he glanced at the 
card. 

“Good afternoon, Mr. John Strieker.” 



MR. STRICKER’S BEST ORIGINAL 317 

“I must—I must speak with you alone,” faltered Mr. 
Strieker. 

The girl went through the door obediently, closing it behind 
her. 

“Charley Turner!” gasped Mr. Strieker reprovingly. 

“Forgive me, Mr. Strieker? I don’t think I understand.” 

“You were dead. We buried you. We spent your insurance 
money on a granite tombstone, carved with a verse. My 
God!” 

“You are puzzling me, Mr. Strieker. Are you quite well?” 

“Don’t talk like that to me, Charley Turner. You under¬ 
stand, all right. Think I wouldn’t know you? I’m the one 
don’t understand. You’re my son-in-law—and my son-in-law 
is dead!” 

“Then why not let him lie in his grave content, Mr. 
Strieker?” 

“You are dead! That is, you were dead,” expostulated 
Mr. Strieker. “Now you’re alive! I see you and I know 
who you are. You are Charley Turner, the man-” 

“You railroaded into an asylum,” said Charley evenly. 
“But that man did die, Mr. Strieker. You should not disinter 
him. Let him rot. A new man has taken his place—that is 
all.” 

“Charley, you don’t know how serious this is. Do you 
realize what has happened?” 

“I shall never be able to realize that.” 

“Clara is married. She married Mr. Harris, the insurance 
man.” 

“And now you are afraid Clara is a bigamist?” 

“Charley! Don’t!” 

“You are afraid she is a bigamist,” insisted Charley calmly. 
“A Baptist bigamist.” 

“Please don’t talk like that, Charley. You don’t under¬ 
stand. They have two innocent little children.” 

“And you are afraid they are-” 



318 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


“Don't!” 

“Baptist-” 

“Don’t you dare!” 

John Strieker pulled out his handkerchief and plucked at 
his eyes fumblingly. 

“Charley,” he said, “I don’t know where I am or what has 
happened to me. I didn’t come up here for nothing like this. 
I came up here on a business matter. Now the world seems 
to be all turned upside down, when everything was going so 
nice. A real man will show his mettle in a crisis. No man 
must lose his head when trouble comes. The man that’s worth 
while is the man with a smile. But I—I—can I sit down?” 

Charley made haste to offer him a chair. 

“Cheer up, Mr. Strieker,” he said. “If there is trouble, 
you will make it yourself. You believe Clara is living in 
adultery.” 

“A man must stick to what he believes to be honest and 
right,” replied Mr. Strieker positively. “And yet I don’t know 
what is right now and what ain’t. Charley, you won’t be sore 
when I say to you, here and now, that you led my daughter 
Clara one awful life. I saw that child—she’s my child and 
I love her—getting thin and sick and fighting mad all the 
time. She wasn’t born like that. You made her like that. 
Now she’s married to a good, God-fearing, sober, Christian 
man. They’ve got two innocent little children that take after 
me. I don’t want Clara’s heart broken. She sings all the 
time, now, and she’s getting stout. And now this-” 

Charley came over and put his hand on the shoulder of 
old John Strieker. 

“If you bring me back from the pit where you buried me,” 
he said solemnly, “you will break her heart. No one can ever 
know the truth, unless you speak.” 

The old man sat suddenly erect. 

“May the good Lord forgive me for it,” he said, “but I 
think I’d rather go to hell than break up Clara’s home.” 



MR. STRICKER’S BEST ORIGINAL 319 

Charley eyed him keenly. He was older; pathetically 
older. Poor old devil! Putting his immortal soul in jeopardy 
to save his daughter from tears! There was something 
beautiful in old John Strieker. 

He got up with something of an air of restored importance. 

“You know,” he said, “I came up here to get Peter Gaunt 
to do a job for us down home. But now—of course! . . . 
Wait a minute!” 

His eyes had lighted up with a sudden gleam of wonder. 

“Is this the room where you paint?” he asked huskily. 
“Yes.” 

The old man was trembling with excitement as he ap¬ 
proached the easel. He bent over, staring hard at something; 
when he looked up, his face was aglow. 

“Charley,” he said accusingly, “you hurt my feelings once. 
You criticized my factory. I remember every word you said. 
You said there wasn’t any dream in my factory. You said you 
wouldn’t mind being a shoe clerk, but you hated my factory. 
Brushes! Dirt! You remember that?” 

Charley nodded. 

“And yet, look here!” 

He seized a brush and waved it triumphantly over his head. 

“You paint your pictures with a Strickly Strieker brush!” 
he shouted. 

Charley clapped his hands and laughed. He had never 
even so much as glanced at the trade-mark that had once been 
so familiar. 

“Mr. Strieker,” he said. “I ask your forgiveness. This is 
your latest and very best original.” 

The old man eyed him aslant. 

“Would you—give me a testimonial for these brushes?” he 
asked breathlessly. 

“I will!” 

Mr. Strieker crossed his hands over his stomach with some¬ 
thing like his old assurance. 


320 


BEHOLD THIS DREAMER 


“I am going to advertise those brushes as they were never 
advertised before!” he promised himself. “Endorsed by Peter 
Gaunt, the great artist! I am going to have them trade- 
marked-” 

After a while he was gone. Charley sat for a long time 
lost in musings. His secretary bade him good-night . . . 
words . . . words . . . 

He was alone. Moments—hours. 

The quick evening of the autumn rushed in through the open 
window, scattering cold drops of rain. A shiver ran through 
him: on the back of his hand had spattered cold water. 

His soul was cold. 

He closed the window and turned back to the desk. Shadows 
and mystery and the silence of insistent loneliness. 

He lighted the desk lamp. 

He was warm; there was light! 









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